Crossed Swords - Ben Counter, page 1
CROSSED SWORDS
Ben Counter
‘I see fate plays knucklebones with me,’ said Brother Valhid, the crossed swords on his shoulder plate lit by the pale green light from his auspex scanner. ‘Now I have to fight my enemies alongside a Brae.’
Brother Fejulah looked at his fellow Astral Knight through the gloom of the necropolis. ‘And here I was expecting to see the necrons rushing at me out of the darkness,’ he replied. ‘Instead I see a scion of House ban Devolon. I do not know which I would prefer.’
‘Another warrior for our band,’ came a gruff voice from behind Valhid. ‘Soon we shall have an army. Your name?’
Sergeant El’Kura came into the feeble light. The lines of his face were as proud a mark of the veteran as the long service studs in his forehead. Alongside him were the other members of his makeshift squad – four more Astral Knights, in the livery of several different companies.
‘Fejulah, of the Fourth,’ came the reply. ‘I was separated in the crash.’
‘The Fourth have suffered the worst,’ said El’Kura. ‘You have lost many brothers. Down here, our priority is to rejoin other survivors and regroup. I welcome another gun.’
‘I must link up with my company command,’ said Fejulah.
‘The Fourth has no command,’ said El’Kura. ‘I am all there is.’
‘Then I welcome the chance to fight back,’ said Fejulah.
‘I can spare no more time for niceties,’ said the sergeant. ‘We are heading for a structure to our northwest. Before we were cut off from the vox-net we heard tell of a central tomb complex. Other Astral Knights will be using it as a rally point. But we must move now. The foe are hunting us.’
The squad moved off, bringing Fejulah with them. All around them, the depths of the necropolis loomed pitch black, the hints of enormous tombs and monumental statues edged grey in the Space Marines’ enhanced vision.
Brother Valhid cast a glance at Fejulah as the squad dropped into formation. There was nothing in either man’s eyes that spoke of anything but hate.
On the crest of a shattered black stone ridge, where some ancient tectonic shift had crushed a hundred tombs into a spine of broken obsidian, the necrons struck.
The Astral Knights had by that time given a name to the enemy that waited for them on the artificial planetoid they called the World Engine. The necrons were constructs, thinking machines that ignorant human settlers had woken from their tombs on far-flung worlds of the Imperium. There was next to nothing known about them, with only a handful of encounters logged in the battle-histories to which the Astral Knights had access. The Chapter was learning as they fought, and they were costly lessons.
‘Filth on their bones!’ yelled Brother Saahiran, leaping onto a jutting shard of black stone, hefting the weight of his heavy bolter. ‘Take the life from this Astral Knight when a thousand of you k’nib-botherers lie dead!’
He was the first to see them – grey ghosts surging down from above, half-real constructs that shifted between reality and the substance of ghosts. The rest of the squad had a second’s notice before the heavy bolter blazed, the strobe of the gunfire lighting up the enormous stone faces that loomed down from the darkness overhead.
A necron wraith was caught in the burst and thrown against one of the statues. Each wraith had a humanoid torso, with hands ending in bright silver blades. Below the waist, long tails of segmented steel hung like lengths of metallic entrails. In those flashes of light the skeletal shape typical of the necrons was revealed: metallic organ-components visible between steel ribs and a head resembling a barely-sketched and stylised skull.
‘Form up!’ yelled Sergeant El’Kura. ‘Back to back!’
Three wraiths dived. Saahiran fended off another with a burst of fire, forcing it to shift into its ghostly form before it plunged its blades through him. The other Astral Knights gathered around Saahiran as if he were a fortification to be defended. Another wraith slashed past them, blades out as bolter shells burst and cracked against it. El’Kura roared as a black line appeared along one forearm, blood welling up in the wound a moment later.
The wounded wraith slithered to the broken ground. Sparks flew from its ruptured carapace. Brother Fejulah leapt for it, sprinting across the ridge with his chainsword in hand.
The necron rose up as Fejulah reached striking distance. It lashed at him with a hand full of blades. Fejulah pivoted and ducked, a move well practised on the duelling fields of Obsidia. The blades whistled over his head and he thrust up his chainblade.
The sword’s teeth ground into steel. He fought against the resistance, the necron’s living metal holding as the wraith reached down for Fejulah who put up his free hand and grabbed the necron’s wrist. The two wrestled for a moment, each seeking to plunge a fatal blow into the other.
Though it was wounded, the steel of the necron’s construction gave it the strength to match the Astral Knight. Fejulah tried to twist it around but the necron’s other hand reached across his throat, closing to scissor through ceramite and flesh.
A second armoured shape crashed into the wraith. Fejulah recognised the livery of the Eighth Company and the flashes of assault honours on the newcomer’s shoulder pad. The wraith was thrown back against the statue, more sparks spurting from its wounds. Fejulah drew back his chainsword and thrust again, but this time the wraith shifted into its ghostly form and vanished back through the stone. The chainblade ripped a spray of obsidian shards from the statue.
Fejulah only knew the name of the Astral Knight who had saved him: Brother Moxas of the Eighth Company, an assault specialist. There had been no time for proper introductions.
‘Move!’ barked Moxas, grabbing Fejulah’s shoulder guard to drag him back to the squad.
Two more wraiths shimmered into view overhead. Blades swept by, phasing in and out of existence to come back into reality halfway through their quarry. Fejulah lashed at them with his chainblade and was rewarded with a jolt of steel against steel. The other Astral Knights kept up their fire, bolter fire stuttering and crumping through the shadows. One wraith was battered back, a stream of shots bursting against it, as another looped up high and arrowed down at Fejulah and Moxas.
Moxas hammered off a volley from his bolt pistol at the wraith diving towards him. Fire burst against its steel skull, blasting chunks of metal off its stylised face. But it did not slow down as it spread its claws.
The wraith crashed into Moxas. It phased out of reality as it hit, and its forelimbs passed right through the Astral Knight’s torso. Then it became real again and it tore its blades free of Moxas, shredded his chest and wrenching his ribcage wide open. For an awful moment, Moxas’s internal organs were exposed, dark crimson and glistening in the stuttering light of the gunfire. Then gore welled up and Moxas flopped to the floor, the light gone from his eyes, dead before he hit the broken stone.
More bolter fire thudded into the wraith. One blood-slicked arm was blown off. Components spilled and pinged against the stone. Fejulah hacked at the creature and his chainblade bit deep through the necron’s broken carapace. Hot sparks spattered over Fejulah’s armour. The wraith’s systems shorted and it jerked as it died, servos popping as Fejulah sawed through its armoured spine.
Fejulah made it back to the knot of Astral Knights as Saahiran blasted the wraith into torn components with a burst of heavy bolter fire. The last wraith slipped away into the darkness pursued by gunfire, shifting through a wall of black stone.
‘I told you to form up,’ said Sergeant El’Kura, casting a sideways glance at Fejulah.
The echoes died down. Brother Rach’tul, wearing the flashes of an Apothecarion aspirant on his armour, bent over the shredded remains of Brother Moxas to remove the gene-seed organ from his throat. Then, in silence, the makeshift fireteam moved on, off the exposed ridge and further into the guts of the necropolis.
There were no further words. None were needed.
‘I know what you are,’ said Brother Phaetax as he and Valhid crouched in the shelter of a fallen statue. The statue was of a necron, but not the steel-bodied constructs the Astral Knights had fought on the World Engine thus far. This one was rendered as if a creature of flesh, its elongated face and hunched shape an ancestor of the constructs’ forms. Perhaps this was what the necrons once were. Perhaps it was what they wanted to be. In front of the two Astral Knights was the next stage of the fireteam’s journey, a dangerously open crossroads between roads lined with lesser noble tombs.
‘And what does that mean?’ asked Valhid.
‘You’re a ban Devolon,’ said Phaetax. Brother Phaetax wore the marks of a veteran on his armour. He had fought hundreds of battles to earn them, and in the Astral Knights an officer like El’Kura would use the counsel of such veterans all the time. There was very little he had not seen.
‘I am ban Devolon Valhid Sulufan,’ said Valhid. ‘I am proud. I have no reason to hide it.’
‘El’Kura might have picked up on it,’ said Phaetax. ‘He might not have. But I know.’
‘Know what?’
‘The history between House ban Devolon and House Brae. That lad Fejulah is a Brae. I saw the way you looked at him when you realised. You can’t hide something like that from eyes as old as mine.’
‘Then you know why we despise them,’ said Valhid. ‘The Brae are glory-hunters and braggarts. They sent the men of ban Devolon into
‘But you are an Astral Knight before your house,’ said Phaetax. ‘We leave our families behind when we enter the Chapter.’
‘I thought you were a veteran,’ said Valhid. ‘You know better than anyone that that is not true. No matter how far we are from Obsidia, we never turn our backs on our family. Especially not when there is a Brae ready to march us all to our deaths.’
‘No wonder Lord Amhrad keeps the Brae and the ban Devolons separate,’ said Phaetax. ‘But we have no such luxuries down here.’
Any reply Valhid was about to make was cut off by the movement down below. The pair had been sent by El’Kura to scout the path ahead and watch for necrons waiting for them at the crossroads. A handful of necrons emerged from between the tombs, but they were broken, corroded models, the shambling refuse of whatever society the necrons had.
‘There are contacts,’ said Phaetax into the squad vox. The vox-net functioned only at very close ranges, and even with the rest of the team a hundred metres away it was still awash with static. ‘But not significant.’
‘Moving in,’ replied El’Kura. ‘Cover us.’
The rest of the Astral Knights moved into view, running across the open ground. A burst of bolter fire took down half the constructs in seconds, with the rest despatched shortly afterwards with chainblades and combat knives. Brother Saahiran mashed one against the wall of a tomb with the weight of his heavy bolter.
The crossroads cleared, Phaetax and Valhid scrambled down the slope of collapsed tombs to join them. Up close the constructs were pitted with corrosion, patches of rust and blistering like the pockmarks of a disfiguring disease.
Valhid kicked one onto its front and crunched a boot through its skull. There was no point spending a bolter shell to finish it.
Too late, he saw the metallic spur emerging from the ruin of its face, articulating like a slender steel finger as it slid from the flaking metallic substance the necron had instead of a brain. The steel glowed suddenly blue-hot and punched through Valhid’s greave, just above the ankle. He felt a tiny fleck of pain there as it slipped through skin, muscle and into bone.
Valhid gasped as a pressure clawed at the back of his brain. It felt like an invisible hand was squeezing everything inside his skull. The edge of his vision greyed out and another sight was ghosted over the wrecked necron beneath him.
It was another necron, but not the misbegotten creatures the Astral Knights had destroyed. It was tall and regal, not hunched like the others. Its carapace and ribcage were encased in bronze, and patterns of silver and turquoise decorated the crescents of its shoulder guards. A fat emerald shone in the centre of its sternum.
The only feature was a single eye, a silver orb set in the smooth iron of its skull. It turned its face towards Valhid, the eye, engraved with the pattern of a labyrinth, swivelling towards him. Valhid was absolutely certain, even with the lack of expression on the necron’s face, that it was looking at him.
In one hand the necron carried a tall segmented staff, topped with sickle-shaped blades. In the other was a cube of black crystal that shifted and opened. A sickly purple light bled out. Valhid’s attention was drawn to the labyrinth of the spectral necron’s eye as he followed its pathways, focusing tighter and tighter as he followed the path through an infinity of blind turns and dead ends.
Valhid tore his attention away. Whatever link existed between him and the necron was broken and he shook the vision out of his head. He was back at the necropolis crossroads, with the Astral Knights finishing off the last of the shattered constructs.
‘Brother?’ asked Phaetax. The veteran was looking straight at Valhid. ‘I said they looked diseased. Do you think the necrons can suffer disease?’
‘I… I do not know,’ said Valhid. His mind was still full of the afterimage of the necron and, though he knew nothing of the xenos society, he was certain it was an aristocrat among their kind. A leader – something very dangerous indeed. ‘But if they do, we should not tarry.’
‘Valhid speaks the truth,’ said El’Kura as he approached. ‘We must move on. The wraiths are still on our tail. Fejulah and Rach’tul, take the lead.’
The Astral Knights left the crossroads behind. Valhid gave the diseased necrons a final glance. A thought forced its way into his mind, though he tried to keep it down. Were they outcasts? They might be the equivalent of the lepers on human worlds. Or were they something worse?
Biological weapons? Acolytes of a forbidden cult? Experiments?
‘There’s movement behind us,’ said Brother Rach’tul. He clambered onto the lintel of a lesser tomb for a better view. The necropolis was almost completely dark, but a Space Marine’s eyesight could cut far through the gloom. ‘The ghost-constructs. They’re following us.’
‘Persistent grox-suckers,’ growled Saahiran.
The wraiths glittered in the distance, their metallic carapaces shimmering as they shifted in and out of reality. And below them, more metal picked up the faint slivers of light from isolated glowglobes or shining hieroglyphics. A Legion of necrons, marching along the route the wraiths had scouted for them, heading straight for the Astral Knights.
‘We need to get to higher ground,’ said El’Kura. ‘The vox-net will be clearer.’
‘We should find somewhere to defend,’ said Phaetax. ‘We can run for a long time, but I doubt these machines will tire before we do.’
‘Either way,’ said El’Kura, ‘we move.’
The higher the Astral Knights reached, the deeper the darkness sank. A layer or two above the crossroads was a district of gargantuan tombs, the resting places of entire necron dynasties within massive obelisks or pillared temples. On Imperial worlds, they would have been monuments to power and wealth. In the necropolis of the World Engine, they were temples to death.
The squad breached the doors of one tomb, forcing apart slabs of black granite two storeys high. Inside were hundreds of sarcophagi, lined up in neat rows along the ground floor.
Brother Rach’tul ran a hand along the top of one stone coffin. It was inscribed with hieroglyphics. ‘How much could we learn of them,’ he said, ‘if we could only read their language?’
‘Rach’tul, get to the upper floors,’ said El’Kura. ‘See if you can do your philosophising with our fellow Astral Knights over the vox. The rest of you, secure any other ways in or out.’
The necron dynasty entombed here were depicted in stylised carvings, surrounded by the faces of their retainers and allies, or perhaps defeated enemies. Some coffins were plain with a single crest, the same image of an orb surrounded by ovals like a planet with multiple orbiting rings.
‘Then this is what they do with their dead,’ said Phaetax. ‘There must be hundreds of them in here.’
‘Their dead?’ replied Rach’tul. ‘The necrons teleport away when they are deactivated. It is why we have so little knowledge of them. They leave no dead.’
‘Perhaps this is where they teleport to,’ said Fejulah.
‘Make ready to fight,’ ordered El’Kura. ‘The enemy approaches.’
The necrons had gathered their strength as they pursued the Astral Knights. The wraiths had gathered a Legion of warrior-constructs that marched in step, their feet beating a regular metallic rhythm from the steel and stone of the necropolis. Scarabs scuttled along beside them in a glittering silver carpet. A walker lurched on six skinny legs, a swivelling gun mounted on the underside of its armoured body.
‘Well, gnaw an ambull’s–’ hissed Saahiran.
‘Enough,’ said El’Kura.
‘Quite the honour,’ said Phaetax, watching the advancing necrons through the tomb doors alongside the rest of the fireteam. ‘I can’t imagine how mortified I would be to be killed by less than an army.’
El’Kura approached the doorway. ‘Hold these doors and fall back to the upper floors when they reach the threshold,’ said the sergeant. ‘They will pay for every floor in their fallen. In the narrows here, a few may fight many with great profit. And Brother Phaetax, you may have seen many battles, but I doubt you prevailed in any of them by speaking of your death before battle was joined.’
