Shadow Captain - David Annandale Read online

  The eldar departed, bikes streaking over the morning field of a paradise tipped into war. Krevaan returned to the Claw of Deliverance. As the gunship took off, he looked out of a viewing block. He followed the track of the two warriors as they joined the larger stream of skimmers. They flowed out of Reclamation to hook up with the patrols that would now be converging on the orks. Krevaan appreciated the art that he saw. He understood the elegance of the perfectly executed attack. Whether it came from the shadows or the wind, the enemy did not see the blow coming until it was too late.

  Just as the eldar would not see his blade until it was deep in their flesh.

  He thought about the melta bombs planted on the skimmers, awaiting his will. He looked across the troop compartment at Thaene. The Techmarine’s face was expressionless. Much of his flesh had given way to machinic replacement. His eyes were black crystal lenses. His lips were a grille that was a mirror of his helmet’s. The larynx through which he spoke delivered his words in a flat monotone. The cock of his head was expressive, though. He can see my doubts, Krevaan thought.

  ‘What do the eldar intend?’ Thaene asked.

  ‘To fight a heroic, and perhaps doomed, battle.’

  ‘Their plan is much like ours, then.’

  Was Thaene capable of humour? That was a mystery Krevaan had tried and failed to pierce several times in the past. He decided to take the words at face value. ‘Quite,’ he said. They had no real intelligence on the land train beyond Caeligus’s aborted vox transmission. But the obliteration of the squad told an important story. All ten of the Raven Guard gone in seconds. The rest of Eighth Company would be up against a weapon that was the equal, at least, of the entire greenskin army.

  Thaene was still watching him. ‘A question, Shadow Captain?’

  ‘Go ahead, brother.’

  ‘Do you believe we were in error in our judgement of the eldar?’

  Having his doubts spoken aloud gave them added force. ‘We were wise to prepare for the worst eventuality,’ he said, knowing that that was not what Thaene had asked. The Techmarine said nothing in response. He remained motionless, impassive, while Krevaan examined his own reasoning.

  He did not trust the eldar. No human should. And after the orks were crushed, the eldar would have to leave Lepidus, or be exterminated in turn. These facts were givens. There could be no tolerance of xenos presence on an Imperial world. Krevaan, though, had acted on a presumption of hostilities

  Why did you plant the bombs?

  Because eldar have a deeper agenda.

  One that you know to be inimical to Imperium?

  If it is for xenos ends, it is inimical.

  That truth wasn’t enough. It was a principle so universal, it might as well have been background radiation. It did not speak to his personal decision.

  Krevaan looked deeper. It was his responsibility as captain to know the source of his commands. That was intelligence at least as vital as understanding the enemy. He found himself turning to his experiences in the Deathwatch. Mission after mission, decade after decade of xenos extermination. The reflex to plan the violent end of the eldar on Lepidus was as natural as breathing.

  And what of honour?

  That mattered too.

  What if the eldar are truly acting in good faith?

  Doubts on that side too. But the possibility was there. He could not deny the reality of what they were attempting in the battlefield.

  He looked up at Thaene. ‘Brother Techmarine,’ he said, ‘you asked, earlier, if there was any chance we would not use the bombs.’

  ‘You have decided that there is, Shadow Captain?’

  Krevaan nodded. ‘We will give the eldar the opportunity to prove themselves. If they act honourably, they will be allowed to depart the planet without harm.’

  Thaene looked out through the viewing block on his side of the compartment. ‘I can see the greenskins,’ he said. ‘Their force is colossal. They may not grant the eldar the chance that you offer.’

  ‘It would,’ Krevaan said, ‘be in our best interests that they do.’

  Radost’s voice sounded from the vox-speakers. ‘Land train in sight.’

  Krevaan rose, opened the forward door, and climbed the ladder into the cockpit. He looked ahead. He saw the train. It was the antithesis of the Raven Guard way of war. It was monstrous. It was snake and mountain chain. It was machinery that had become the brutality of strength itself.

  The train rumbled across the plain, gouging a long wound over the landscape. Its current position was just to the south of the higher, rockier, gully-riven terrain. A few kilometres to the north-west, the ork army fought the squads of Eighth Company. The formation of eldar skimmers was moments away from joining the fight.

  ‘All squads,’ Krevaan voxed, ‘leave the orks to the eldar. Converge on the train.’

  ‘What do you suppose will kill that thing?’ Radost asked.

  ‘The same things that will kill anything else,’ Krevaan said. ‘Shadows and knowledge, brother. Shadows and knowledge.’

  The Space Marines left the field as the Saim-Hann closed in. Their jump packs took them away in steep climbs. Alathannas saw what looked like a flight of black, iron birds shooting upwards. They were harsh silhouettes, fire and darkness cutting wounds against the sky. The humans lacked grace in their methods of combat, he thought. But there was a cold, merciless precision at work. To be dismissive of it would be to fall to it.

  The orks were convinced of the Raven Guard threat. The army was having to advance through hundreds of its dead. Two- and four-wheeled vehicles smouldered, almost all of them killed in the middle of the road, where they would most hamper the orks’ forward march. The horde had spilled up the slopes on either side of the road, and more of them had died there. The Raven Guard’s kills had eaten into the coherence of the ork army. It still advanced, but more slowly. Eddies of confusion slowed it down. The orks were striking out in all directions, and were unable to find a concentrated foe. Instead, they had been struck again and again by single warriors and small hit teams.

  The orks had drawn their own blood. Alathannas saw, scattered over the hills and on the road, the giant bodies of the Space Marines. Their armour had been shattered by massive projectiles and repeated explosive attacks. Orks were still raining blows on the corpses. The green tide bellowed in triumph as its foe departed, and raged in frustration that its prey was slipping from its grasp. The orks sent a storm of ordnance into the skies. As if governed by a single thought, they all turned their eyes upward. They were so intent on bringing down the giant humans that they paid no attention to the ground.

  They don’t see us, Alathannas thought. He rode just behind the autarch. Behind his helmet, he grinned for the first time in days.

  The Saim-Hann slashed into the orks’ front lines. Eleira led them in a narrow wedge. The jetbikes’ catapults launched their monomolecular discs into the horde. The shuriken sliced through muscle and bone, dismembered and disembowelled. They blinded, and they opened throats, and they even cut through weapons. Some orks found their prize possessions coming apart in their hands. Others tried to fire the damaged gear, and lost hands or lives as the guns blew up. The jetbikes carved their way through the orks until Eleira signalled a turn and led the squadron out of their midst towards the south. She hesitated briefly at the first gully.

  Alathannas looked back. The orks had given up on the Raven Guard. They were now sending all their wrath towards the eldar. Their fire was indiscriminate, inaccurate and plentiful. Rounds chewed up the nearby ground. One hit the cowling of his jetbike. The orks did not pursue. Though distracted, they were still moving down the road, towards the junction that would take them to the city.

  And the boon that would make them unstoppable.

  Eleira turned to Passavan. ‘The strategy will work,’ the farseer said. ‘For good or ill.’

  ‘For b
oth,’ Eleira shot back. Then she was riding again, leading them all again, a crimson spear aimed at the orkish heart.

  They could not pierce that heart. Alathannas knew that. The body of the horde was too strong, too resilient in numbers. Even so, the satisfaction of retaliation was visceral. The retreat at the bridge had been a profound humiliation. Now the orks were learning the cost of that affront.

  He was grinning again as the bikes hit the orks for a second time. The rush of speed was even greater inside the green tide. He was surrounded by fragmentary images of ork faces. They raged, they screamed, and they bled and died. He saw a blur of green, of clawed fists turning blades and guns his way. They were so slow, they appeared frozen.

  The orks’ sluggishness was an illusion. A dangerous one. It encouraged recklessness. It bred disaster. Eleira knew this. She guided her warriors back out once more, before the orks could arrest their flight. But Alathannas still heard the crunch of a high-velocity impact, the singing wrench of disintegrating wraithbone. The cry of a rider who was not killed on the instant, and instead fell to the butchery of the orks.

  A battlewagon pushed past the wreckage of one of its kin. It surged forwards, cannon and side guns blazing. A shell burned through the air over Alathannas’s head. It struck a jetbike three back from him. The explosion took out the skimmer, its rider, and the orks in immediate proximity. Earth, flesh and wreckage rained back down.

  Bringing up the rear of the eldar formation was the sole remaining Vyper. Its gunner, Selandria, turned the bright lance against the tank. Its beam scorched the armour, shearing right through the thinner plating of the shutters. It cut the side gunners in half.

  The cannon swung at the Vyper. Selandria trained the beam on the barrel of the gun. The battlewagon fired as the skimmer passed close. Warped by the lance, the cannon burst apart. Selandria staggered as shrapnel bit into her armour.

  The battlewagon was bereft of weapons except its very mass. The maniacal frustration of its driver was audible well beyond the tank itself. As the Vyper veered away from the tank, following the jetbikes, the battlewagon gave chase. It broke out of the greater mass of the army, and headed out across the plain after the eldar.

  The other orks on vehicles did the same. Most of the bikes and buggies in the front half of the ork advance had been destroyed by the Raven Guard. But another wave had been riding escort to the rearward tanks, and its vehicles now roared free of the choke point. Blue and black smoke choked the air. The drivers pursued the Saim-Hann with total disregard of common sense. Rough terrain or smooth made little difference to the skimmers. The jetbikes flew above the uneven ground. The orks came at such speed that they caught up to the eldar. For a few orks, that was all that they did. Their bikes hit rock outcroppings. The drivers lost control. The vehicles went into violent rolls.

  Still the bikes kept coming. The more stable buggies weren’t far behind. Sprays of bullets covered the eldar formation. They began to take their toll. Two more riders were killed. The last of the enemy force passed through the choke point, unleashing still more vehicles. The final two battlewagons joined in the hunt. So did the infantry.

  The orks had taken the bait.

  The Saim-Hann raced to the gullies. The formation broke up. A handful of bikes dropped down each slope. They spread out over the terrain. They were no longer a coherent force. Having enticed the orks, the eldar denied them a concentrated group of targets. The green tide had numbers enough to cover the entire area. The orks poured into the maze of narrow streams and high cliffs.

  The duel began.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Claw of Deliverance went in for a strafing run along the length of the land train. The armoured beast grew before Krevaan’s gaze. The locomotive and four cars resembled a mechanical being with its own volition. It was gargoyle, snake and battering ram. The crude, leering face at the front was, he suspected, a product of whatever passed for worship for the greenskins. The behemoth was constructed in tribute to their false god, and it was so powerful that it approached the monstrous divine.

  The Thunderhawk launched a full barrage at the locomotive. Primary cannon, twin-linked heavy bolters, lascannons and Hellstrike missiles: an inferno enveloped the engine. The train didn’t even slow. It drove through the explosions, and Krevaan thought its face bore a mocking snarl. He could see some minor scarring on the roof plating of the cars, but the locomotive showed no damage at all. At the very least, the clear blister beneath the great turret should have been shattered, its occupant reduced to ash. Instead the engineer appeared to wave, as if amused by the Raven Guard’s attempts to do it harm. Then it retaliated.

  The big gun rose and swung towards the gunship. The movement was slow. Radost evaded it easily. The other, smaller guns were a different story. The entire length of the train erupted in projectile fire. The armament was beyond excessive. It was as if the engineer had been possessed by an inspiration that had turned into madness. Guns that blurred the line between stubber and cannon were present every few metres along both sides of the roofs of the engine and the cars. The simultaneity of the fire meant that the engineer was controlling all of them. Shutters opened up in the flanks, and the ork troops aboard started shooting too.

  Radost took the Thunderhawk into a steep climb. The wall of ordnance slammed against its armour. A few of the rounds penetrated, though the damage was minimal. The main cannon fired. The shot went wide, but the size of the shell hit home for Krevaan. That was an artillery piece. The shell arced into the sky. Its descent was hidden. The orks, he realised, could start bombarding Reclamation whenever the spirit moved them.

  The orks wanted the city as badly as the eldar did. They both had to be denied.

  ‘Shadow Captain,’ Zobak voxed, ‘we are in position to attempt to board.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Approaching the rear car.’

  Radost brought the gunship around. He began dropping towards the train once more. The squads had all been kept at bay by the massive firepower, but Krevaan saw Zobak’s squad arrowing down towards their target. ‘We’ll draw the fire,’ Krevaan said.

  Radost nodded that he’d understood. He raced the assault squad. The Thunderhawk screamed across the locomotive’s front at maximum velocity. The ork guns sought it out again. The range of the train’s field of fire was impressive. The engineer could shoot at whatever it saw. The Claw of Deliverance passed close enough for Krevaan to see the massive grin on the ork’s face.

  The guns tracked, the beat of their fire a chud-chud-chud-chud-chud that shook the land. More rounds struck the gunship. He heard the crash and shatter of damage. He saw Radost struggle with controls becoming sluggish. The gunship’s weapons struck at the train again, and again the ork machine shrugged them off.

  The Claw shot up and away from the train. Krevaan looked down to see if they had held the ork’s attention long enough to give Zobak the chance he needed.

  They had not.

  He saw the final moments of another slaughter. The train’s guns were not slaved to each other. They were capable of firing at independent targets. While the locomotive’s armaments had hit the Thunderhawk, the ones on the cars had responded to Zobak’s attempted incursion. The blizzard of fire killed his squad. Of the ten warriors, only one managed to land on the roof.

  ‘Take us to the rear,’ Krevaan told Radost.

  The pilot kept the gunship high until he was level with the last car and began the descent. Krevaan called the sergeant’s name over the vox. Zobak answered with a croak. It was he who stood on the roof. As the gunship drew nearer, Krevaan increased the magnification of his helmet lenses. He looked at his sergeant. Zobak was stooped, his armour ruined in a dozen places. He took one heavy step.

  A hatch opened in the centre of the roof and an ork climbed out. It rushed at the Space Marine, brandishing a cleaver the size of its arm. Zobak did not move. The ork stepped up to him and swung th
e cleaver back with both hands. Zobak shot out his arm, ramming his lightning claws into the ork’s brain. The ork sagged on the spikes. Its weight dragged Zobak’s arm down. He almost dropped to his knees. He pulled his arm away, freeing it of the ork. He stumbled back, but remained upright.

  He walked forward another step.

  Two more orks had emerged from the hatch. They carried huge shotguns. They shot him as they walked towards him. The rounds must have been solid slugs. The impacts were massive. Zobak jerked with each hit. The orks fired, reloaded, fired again.

  Krevaan watched the blows batter the sergeant to death. The vision through his lenses grew in detail and pain as the Thunderhawk plunged towards the roof of the train in a desperate dive.

  A useless dive, Krevaan thought. Did he imagine there was any aid they could bring to Zobak? What did he think would happen when the Claw of Deliverance came close to the land train once more? He killed the magnification. ‘Pull up,’ he told Radost.

  The pilot must have been expecting the order. He responded as if he had been about to make the course correction himself at that moment. Below, the diminished figure of Zobak fell from the train. He was crushed beneath the treads of the cars.

  Radost asked, ‘We do have to board it, don’t we?’

  Krevaan nodded. ‘Our weapons aren’t enough to get through that force field.’

  ‘How can it be so powerful?’

  ‘For the same reason that all these greenskins are exaggerated exemplars of their kind. There is something on this planet, brother, that is driving them to obscene accomplishments.’ The eldar know what it is, he thought. There would be no use in asking Alathannas the nature of the secret. It was something important to the eldar. It would have to be discovered by other means.