Only War: Stories from the 41st Millennium, page 1
More Warhammer 40,000 from Black Library
WITCHBRINGER
An Astra Militarum novel by Steven B Fischer
TRAITOR ROCK
An Astra Militarum novel by Justin D Hill
HONOURBOUND
An Astra Militarum novel by Rachel Harrison
• DAWN OF FIRE •
Book 1: AVENGING SON
Guy Haley
Book 2: THE GATE OF BONES
Andy Clark
Book 3: THE WOLFTIME
Gav Thorpe
Book 4: THRONE OF LIGHT
Guy Haley
THE SWORDS OF CALTH
A Uriel Ventris novel by Graham McNeill
AHRIMAN: ETERNAL
A Thousand Sons novel by John French
GHAZGHKULL THRAKA: PROPHET OF THE WAAAGH!
An orks novel by Nate Crowley
THE BOOK OF MARTYRS
An Adepta Sororitas anthology by Danie Ware, Andy Clark and Phil Kelly
THE TRIUMPH OF SAINT KATHERINE
An Adepta Sororitas novel by Danie Ware
VOID KING
A Rogue Trader novel by Marc Collins
Contents
Cover
Backlist
Warhammer 40,000
Only War: Stories from the 41st Millenium
HAMMER OF THE EMPEROR
The Taste of Fire
Refuge
Redemption Through Sacrifice
The Price of Duty
Anarchy’s End
The Jagged Edge
The Place of Pain and Healing
ANGELS OF DEATH
The Labyrinth of Lost Souls
Faith in Iron
A Coin for the Carrion Thieves
THE ALIEN MENACE
Da Big Mouf
Warsphere
Path of Grief
Voice of Experience
Road Rage
Mad Dok
KEEPERS OF THE FAITH
His Will
Celestine: Revelation
The Moon-Mines of Sciara Lone
Martyr’s End
SERVANTS OF THE THRONE
Ghosts of Iron
Last Flight
Night Shriekers
The Shapers of Scars
About the Author
An Extract from ‘Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind. By the might of His inexhaustible armies a million worlds stand against the dark.
Yet, He is a rotting carcass, the Carrion Lord of the Imperium held in life by marvels from the Dark Age of Technology and the thousand souls sacrificed each day so that His may continue to burn.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. It is to suffer an eternity of carnage and slaughter. It is to have cries of anguish and sorrow drowned by the thirsting laughter of dark gods.
This is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. Forget the power of technology and science. Forget the promise of progress and advancement. Forget any notion of common humanity or compassion.
There is no peace amongst the stars, for in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.
HAMMER OF THE EMPEROR
THE TASTE OF FIRE
STEVEN B FISCHER
There was a beauty in the stillness of the Ourean night. A bitter clarity in the chill predawn air that seemed to echo through the very darkness itself. An illusion of peace in the dim saffron glow of the mountainous world’s sister moons filtering down through the branches of frost-laden conifers and reflecting off the slopes below.
But it was only an illusion.
Lieutenant Glavia Aerand knew this world was no different from any other. No purer than the filthy, crawling hives of Machari and Scintilla. No less obscene than the Chaos-ridden remnants of her home world. She had learned long ago that no world held a monopoly on evil, because her species carried evil with it. In one movement, she raised her hand and shattered the facade.
One last breath of blessed silence before the earth shuddered with the paired concussions of starfire mortars, which burst in the sky seconds later, bathing the high mountain valley in the watery-green incandescence of illumination rounds. Beneath that fiery dusk, Secundus Company descended on the cultist den like birds of prey.
At the back of Aerand’s mind, a familiar disquiet grew, paired with the caustic scent of charred copper in her nose. Six months ago, this sensation had crippled her the first time she’d felt it. Six months ago, she hadn’t known what it meant. Now, she understood the warning all too well. After half a year of tracking Chaos cultists through the bitter wilds of this Throne-cursed planet, her hunt was almost over.
As Aerand’s troopers rushed towards the shadow of two waiting cave mouths, the earth around them erupted into plumes of acrid smoke. Gouts of half-frozen soil and jagged stone fragments sprayed her soldiers as the drumbeat of mortars rang out from atop the ridgeline behind them.
‘Gerstahl’s breath!’ Olevier Corwyn cursed, Aerand’s company sergeant puffing with exertion as the pair sprinted to match pace with their charging platoons. ‘You’re sure you ordered Lieutenant Vyse to aim her heavy squads at the enemy, not us?’
Despite the moment, Aerand’s face split into a smile. ‘Danger close is called danger close for a reason. We hammer every egress from this place, so the heretics don’t slip our grasp again.’
Ahead, First Platoon’s lead squad rushed through the detritus, helm lumens flickering to life as they were swallowed by the cave’s gaping maw. Aerand swept in behind them. Never first in. Never last. The proper place for a commander was at the heart of her soldiers.
As she drove into the darkness, Aerand braced herself for the inevitable onslaught. She was no fool – Cadians were going to die today. A cost both she and her soldiers were willing to pay. But with every step she took down the narrow stone corridor, an even greater fear blossomed within her.
Secundus Company had been hunting this particular cultist cell for the better part of two seasons. Countless times she had stood in positions like this one, and countless times her quarry had slipped through her grasp. That fear crystallised as Aerand stepped into a small antechamber, its dripping stone walls empty and lifeless. A small collection of skulls, stained with ribbons of old, dark blood and the dirty yellow wax of tallow candles, lay scattered on the floor. To her right, First Platoon continued down the main corridor, and on her left, Second Platoon’s lumens already approached.
‘West network clear,’ Lieutenant Graves barked through her earpiece, his words garbled by the yards of bedrock between them.
‘East network clear,’ Sergeant Maltia echoed, the disappointment in her voice heavy enough to bite.
Beside her, Corwyn muttered another curse, while the drumming of mortars continued to shake the mountain. ‘Don’t know where they could have gone,’ he grumbled. ‘Vyse is turning the whole ridgeline into gravel.’
Aerand nodded, distracted, as the ringing in her ears began to swell. ‘Not gone,’ she whispered.
‘What do you mean?’ Corwyn replied. ‘This tunnel’s scarcely wide enough to hide the gut I’m growing, let alone a few hundred Chaos cultists.’
‘Not all of them are gone, at least.’
As she motioned for the sergeant to follow, Aerand stepped down a narrow corridor to her right, the ceiling low enough to scrape the top of her helm. Here, the smooth, polished walls of the main chambers disappeared, replaced by deep, unweathered grooves.
‘Fresh addition,’ Corwyn muttered. ‘And a hasty one, at that.’
Shortly, the tunnel gave way to a set of stairs, lumens flickering in the murky depths below. Cadian voices echoed up the tunnel, and Corwyn’s expression fell into a scowl as he walked ahead. ‘First Platoon,’ he called back, clearing a low archway. ‘Nbade’s squad is already here.’
Aerand followed into the small, rough-cut chamber, an oppressiveness to its darkness that seemed to resist the normally piercing light of her troopers’ lumens. Half a dozen men and women lay chained to the raw stone wall, and the lieutenant stifled the nausea rising within her as that ringing in her ears began to grow.
‘Alive, Argos?’ she asked, suspecting she already knew the answer.
Her chief medicae knelt over an emaciated young woman, her long, thin hair drifting down to cover pale, dirt-laden skin. A crude iron manacle hung around one of her horribly thin wrists, the skin beneath lacerated from her struggles against it. The remainder of her body was covered in a macabre mosaic of branded symbols, each of which stoked the fire beneath Aerand’s skin.
The medicae shook his head. ‘Not sure how long they’ve been here, sir, but long enough.’
‘Check the rest,’ Corwyn replied, an uncharacteristic edge to his voice.
One by one, Argos pronounced the prisoners dead, until he knelt over a final body. An adolescent man, the youngest of the group, and perhaps the most hale. The medicae paused, fingers resting on the youth’s n
A sudden wave of unease washed over Aerand as a sound like the sea swallowed her whole. Staggered, she took a step back, pressing her hand against the wall and closing her eyes. An image flashed through her mind, of the man on the floor erupting into a gout of searing blue flame that reached up and devoured the medicae beside him. Then, as soon as it arrived, the vision passed.
Aerand pushed herself upright and lurched towards Argos, grasping the medicae by the shoulders and dragging him to the ground. A moment later the youth’s eyes flashed open beside them and he drew a deep, ragged breath. Suddenly, a horrible blue light enveloped his hands, then burst forward to splash harmlessly against the wall.
Beside her, Corwyn took a step forward and drove the butt of his lasgun into the young man’s head. He crumpled into a heap.
‘Witch,’ the sergeant whispered, half in disbelief.
Aerand nodded slowly and rolled off Argos, pushing herself painfully to her feet. ‘Whatever he is, you do not let that man die until Colonel Yarin herself has seen him.’
Secundus Company slogged through the miserable blend of snow, mud and rain that seemed to be Ourea’s only truly unique feature. After almost a year on the planet, Aerand scarcely noticed the bitter chill in her toes or the squelching moistness that accompanied each step of her boots. She had learned the unpleasant realities of this world long ago, and come to accept that they would not change for her.
As her column filed slowly through a narrow saddle into the skeletal remains of their laconic field camp, she could not help but believe her troopers shared that same belief. Six months ago, after shattering a cultist army at the vicious battle of Apex Inruptus, the soldiers of the Cadian 900th had not thought themselves naive to hope this war might soon be over. Instead, it had simply evolved. Now, rather than conducting lightning raids against massed enemy encampments from the relative comfort of a regimental fortress, the four newly formed light companies of the 900th were scattered to the wind, operating alone in the heart of Ourea’s austere wilds, pursuing ever-elusive cells of tenacious heretics.
As Aerand marched beside her formation, she forced a grim smile onto her face. She was not blind. She knew her troopers were tired and discouraged. She knew her fledgling company was fragile and cracking. How quickly would it shatter entirely if forced to acknowledge that its commander shared her troopers’ same exhaustions and fears?
And then some. Aerand shivered slightly at the memory of her vision in the cave. Not her first premonition, but what had started as rare hunches and intuitions were becoming too frequent, and vivid, for her to ignore. That foresight might have saved Argos’ life, but she could not shake the bitter dismay such portents left on her soul. She whispered a silent prayer and forced the thought from her mind.
Behind Aerand, a vox-caster crackled to life, rousing her from her unproductive mulling. A young corporal ran through the snow, the heavy vox-pack on his back giving him an awkward, lilting gait. He arrived at her side breathless but snapped sharply to attention.
‘Kobald on the line for you, sir,’ the corporal sputtered. Behind the trooper, Sergeant Corwyn’s foot crushed a patch of frozen lichen, and he eyed Aerand with a knowing expression.
‘Thank you, Waldamne,’ she replied, flashing the corporal the brightest grin she could manage. No reason the boy should have to bear his commander’s cynicism in addition to the weight of the vox.
As Aerand grabbed the mouthpiece from the corporal’s hand, however, she spotted a quartet of spindly, mechanical silhouettes crossing over the sheer, jagged ridgeline flanking them. She handed the vox-caster back to Waldamne. ‘On second thoughts, tell Kobald I’m coming to him.’
‘Good news only,’ Aerand called, striding down the muddy, pockmarked trail that passed as the closest thing to their small camp’s road.
The lieutenant, a tall, fiery-haired man with dark, freckled skin, raised his violet eyes from his vehicle and gave her a grunt. Technically her peer in rank, Kobald snapped Aerand a quick salute regardless. Of all her platoon commanders, Kobald seemed the most comfortable being led by a fellow lieutenant, and made the least ordeal of their interactions as a result.
‘Depends on your expectations, I suppose, sir.’
Behind Kobald, the remainder of his squadron continued maintenance on their Sentinels. They had stripped nearly all of the protective armour from the tall, bipedal machines after Ourea’s brutal gravity and precipitous inclines had proven overwhelming for even their famously resilient gyro-stabilisers. But the reduction in shielding made them all the more vulnerable to the planet’s harsh elements, and both the vehicles and their pilots were showing signs of wear.
‘All due respect, sir,’ one of Kobald’s troopers called as he chopped chunks of ice and mud from his Sentinel’s footpads with a rusty, dented entrenching tool. ‘S’not all that good no matter what your expectations were.’
‘And if I expect my troopers to keep their opinions to themselves, and perhaps work harder to keep their vehicles clean?’
‘Then you’re going to be doubly disappointed, sir.’
Aerand chuckled. Famously irreverent, Kobald’s Sentinel pilots took as good as they got. She motioned to the bundled object strapped to the back of the Sentinel’s cab.
‘Show me what you’ve got, and let me be the judge of that. If there’s a crate of caff beneath those blankets, I may just give the lieutenant’s squadron to you.’
‘No such luck,’ Kobald said as the trooper removed the frayed olive-grey fabric from the back of the Sentinel and let its contents fall into the snow. The weight of the sound sent a shiver up Aerand’s spine, and by the time Kobald’s troopers began unwrapping the corpses, she was fully prepared for what she would see.
‘Tranch’s Nameless,’ Corwyn muttered as he surveyed the bodies. A young woman and a greying man, whose face reflected the woman’s as only a father’s could. ‘Just like one we found in the caves.’
‘There were others?’
Aerand nodded grimly. ‘Half a dozen, at least. Chained in a cell beneath the cultist outpost.’
Another grunt and a nod. Kobald motioned to the bruises and abraded skin ringing the corpses’ wrists. ‘Not an escape then, but a flight. Found these two frozen about nine miles from the mouth of the western tunnel. There were more footprints on the trail, but the weather had already done its work on any tracks beyond that.’
Aerand nodded. Somehow, the cultists had anticipated their raid and fled further into the mountains, bringing their captives with them – at least those they deemed strong enough to survive. That was important, then. These prisoners were important.
‘Have your pilots bring them back to Argos,’ she ordered. ‘Maybe he can read something more than just tragedy from the patterns of their bruises and bleeding. Between them and the live one, at least.’
Kobald’s violet eyes perked up at that. The first hint of hope she’d seen in any of her troopers since the night before.
Colonel Atreja Yarin was not a woman who relished surprises, so when Aerand entered her tent to find the commander of the Cadian 900th standing over her small field desk, the lieutenant’s heart immediately rose into her throat. Doubly so at the sight of the silver-haired man beside her.
General Markos Rusk needed no insignia to mark his olive-grey battle uniform – his accosting violet eyes and commanding stance announced his rank for him. Neither did he display a breastplate full of medals and ribbons. Rather, the broken, re-formed bones of his nose and left cheek, and the tangled pneumatics and wire of his augmetic right arm, conveyed the merits of his service in far more convincing detail.
‘Colonel. General,’ Aerand managed. ‘I must admit this visit is unexpected.’
‘Intentionally,’ Rusk replied gruffly. ‘Although apparently more of a surprise than the raid your company attempted this morning.’
Aerand winced at the stinging remark. She was tempted to simply withstand the rebuke, but she knew the general expected – demanded, even – that she push back against it.
‘Not entirely a loss, sir.’
‘A prisoner. We know.’ Yarin held up her hand, clearly not pleased with wasting any more time. ‘Half-dead, by the brief report your medicae gave me. The trooper deserves a medal for keeping that broken husk alive this long.’ The colonel’s voice was laden with exasperation, poorly concealed.
