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Contents

Cover

Blades of Atrocity – Mike Vincent

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Night Lords: The Omnibus’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

BLADES OF ATROCITY

Mike Vincent

The Thunderhawk’s howling engines cycled down and clouds of vapour unfurled as it came to rest on the frigate’s hangar deck. There were no other craft in the small hangar. None would fit around the vast drop-ship. The midnight blue of the Thunderhawk’s hull plating split as the crew ramp descended, spilling bloody light that silhouetted a lone Night Lords warrior. The giant in barbed armour descended the ramp, a mantle of human hides swaying at his back, bat-winged helm in his left hand.

Dalchian Rassaq, the Skin-Taker, commander of the Night Lords warband the Blades of Atrocity, was furious. His deep-set eyes burned in a sallow, war-scarred face. A dozen mortal serfs lined the hangar deck, kneeling, foreheads to the floor as their master returned. He was met by his adjutant, Zorean, slightly taller than his lord and cadaverously gaunt in his night-dark armour.

‘My Lord Skin-Taker.’ Zorean inclined his head as he spoke. ‘Did the war council heed your wisdom?’

‘Of course not,’ Dalchian spat as they left the hangar deck. ‘The woe-begotten parasites we are calling allies have decided upon a symbolic strike rather than a strategic one. The templum-capitalis is to be our target.’

‘So, the threat posed by the aerodrome in the Dathant Heights?’

‘Ignored for now.’

‘Fools.’

‘Worse than fools.’ Dalchian indicated to a serf to call muster. ‘Still, something can be salvaged from this folly. I demanded our Blades lead the assault.’

‘How was that received?’

‘We are the only Legion warband in this alliance, Zor. Even they know when to give respect where it’s due. I’ll be damned if I let any of those scum cheat us out of our share. First in, and we get our pick of the spoils.’

Zorean’s lip curled at that as the two Night Lords made their way through the corridors of their frigate, the Abjuration. At barely a quarter of a mile long and with a crew of just less than a thousand, the vessel was the smallest in the heretic armada. Such a statistic did not concern the Skin-Taker. The lethality of the Night Lords embarked upon it made the Abjuration a far more serious threat than its tonnage would suggest. Dalchian and Zorean stepped onto the twilit bridge, which was dominated by an oculus screen where a grainy vid-capture of the lesser forge world Uzurmandius rotated slowly. Dalchian’s nostrils flared involuntarily as he beheld the image. It was plunder.

It was prey.

Along with the mortal crew, three other Night Lords loomed in the half-dark of the bridge. Claw leaders of the Blades of Atrocity, awaiting their lord’s orders. Krutaan’s gauntlets looked bare without his customary lightning claws. Vankro wore his perpetual sneer, the face-skins of old foes stretched across his breastplate. Havoc Ciburrion stood hunched, the ammo hopper for his beloved autocannon already mounted on his backpack in preparation. My murderers, torturers and villains. My feral beasts in midnight clad. Dalchian Skin-Taker smiled a lipless smile.

‘Claw leaders,’ Dalchian addressed them. ‘We are to lead the orbital assault on the templum-capitalis. Lord Xerclon’s Sons of Malice will form the second wave, with the other warbands following us in. There is an archmagos and a nest of lesser magi and tech-priests there who need to die. Once we begin our insertion, the enemy will doubtlessly reinforce from their fortress-aerodrome at the Dathant Heights. Then the real murder will begin.’

‘Why do we not simply target their fortress first, Skin-Taker?’ Vankro asked.

‘Because we would be doing so alone.’ Dalchian’s scorn was plain in his tone. ‘Nominally, Lord Thelissicus of the Crimson Slaughter holds sway. His forces are thrice ours. Xerclon’s Sons of Malice and the Warp Ghosts of Bonesage Vilyas are in his pocket, and Grensch of the Flylords heaves himself along in the wake of whomever promises the greatest prize. Alone, we could not take this world or plunder its resources. We must be… politic.’ Dalchian swallowed his distaste.

‘You mean weak.’ Krutaan was just pale eyes and a scarred brow above a snarling rebreather.

‘I mean I will do what must be done. Or would you rather see our supplies and ammunition wither away completely, Krutaan?’

Krutaan let out a wordless growl. Dalchian fixed each of his claw leaders with a look.

‘See to your preparations,’ he said. ‘Our blades yet thirst.’

‘Yes, Lord Skin-Taker.’

The wind howled and the rain lashed, and amidst the storm was the cacophony of war. Orbital defence lasers boomed from their subterranean batteries. Flocks of missiles leapt hissing into the heavens. From everywhere came the arrhythmia of explosions, the drumbeat of planetary bombardment.

The Thunderhawk came in low over the templum-capitalis and slowed to a hover over the wide step halfway up the pyramidal structure. The Night Lords dropped from its ramps, serrated armour glinting in the grey of the storm, loping like bloodhounds following a scent. Dalchian was last off, and the Thunderhawk immediately screamed back into the riven sky to prosecute its own assault. Milky precipitation splashed about their boots as they spread out along the plazas and boulevards of the balcony level.

The Adeptus Mechanicus were slow to respond, by their standards. Dalchian’s warriors enjoyed nearly four seconds of unencumbered progress before a dozen Kastelan-designation battle robots clanked into view. Streamers of tracer fire and gouts of chemical flame cut towards the Night Lords. The warriors of the Blades of Atrocity immediately returned fire, the snarl of bolters adding to the atmospheric abuse. Dalchian loosed howling blasts from his plasma pistol as his Blades charged. One of Ciburrion’s Havocs loosed a streaking missile that engulfed a robot in a fireball. A melta bomb mag-locked to the torso of another Kastelan, punching the thing in half with a blinding flash. Then the Night Lords were upon them.

Krutaan pounced first, his paired lightning claws glinting in the storm’s light. He sank the energised talons into a robot’s head, then tore his fists aside, shredded pieces exploding from his claws. Dalchian put the whirling teeth of his chainglaive through another Kastelan’s shoulder joint. The massive limb had not hit the deck plating before he fired a plasma bolt into the robot’s domed head. The automaton sagged, the incendine combustor at its shoulder offering only a desultory cough of liquid fire. A dozen pre-programmed machine-puppets were no match for almost forty veterans of the VIII Legion.

Dalchian moved his band on quickly. Allowing the defenders to gain the initiative would be to invite defeat. The fast blade bites deepest. On that point, how long until our vaunted second wave shows itself?

‘Xerclon, we have taken the eastern balcony level. How far behind are you?’ The vox hissed static, and Dalchian waited for a response. Around them, several portals in the sheer face of the templum-capitalis led from the balconies into a sweeping, high-arched corridor, through which now sprinted ranks of skitarii and skittering, spider-limbed things. The Night Lords took the portals and crashed into the Mechanicus formation, robbing the defenders of their advantage of greater range. The Blades of Atrocity exulted in their butchery. Skitarii warriors broke and splintered, shedding mechanical components, synthetic fluids and organic body parts. Their support units cocked domed heads and laid into the Night Lords with crackling energy blades and fizzing taser goads. One of Dalchian’s Night Lords fell to his knees, decapitated by a Mechanicus blade. Another erupted into a towering beacon of fire as a taser goad ignited his flamer’s canister of promethium. Dalchian weighed in. Gunning his chainglaive, he split a piston-limbed defender from cranium to pelvis. The immolated Night Lord fought on for several seconds before succumbing to the coruscating inferno.

The vox was still silent.

‘Xerclon, where are you?’ Dalchian repeated.

‘Ah, Skin-Taker, there you are.’ The voice was that of Thelissicus of the Crimson Slaughter. Dalchian felled a skitarii commander with a point-blank plasma shot.

‘Where is Xerclon?’ he asked.

‘I’m afraid there’s been a change of plan.’ Thelissicus’ voice, usually like warm grease, was positively gelatinous. ‘Did you not receive the communique?’

‘What change?’ Dalchian’s temper waxed hot within him. I should have foreseen some ploy. He blocked a lunge with his chainglaive and brought a power-armoured knee up into the guts of the skittering thing before him.

‘The council bowed to your wisdom, Lord Skin-Taker. We are assaulting the Dathant Heights aerodrome. You haven’t already committed to the templum-capitalis theatre, have you?’

Dalchian vented a roar of wordless fury, decapitating two skitarii with one sweep of his glaive. So, this was your plan, you worthless scum. Sacrifice my Blades as a diversion while you claim victory for yourself!

He did not bother replying. Warp-cursed bastard though he was, Thelissicus was right about one thing. Dalchian’s Night Lords were committed, and there was no redirecting now.

The furious fight in the corridor ground on as the invaders pressed their attack. The skitarii were efficient and courageous, in their cold and detached way, but they could not hope to repel almost half a company of Night Lords at close quarters. Blood and lubricants made the deck plating treacherous. Bolters, plasma guns and flamers tore into the Adeptus Mechanicus ranks, reaping a hideous toll. After holding for a few painful minutes, the skitarii finally broke. Dalchian allowed his Blades to run them down.

Zorean’s voice came over the vox as Dalchian loaded a fresh cell into his plasma pistol.

‘The landing zone is clear for our second wave, Lord Skin-Taker.’

‘The plan has changed.’ Dalchian opened a vox-link to his whole warband. ‘All Night Lords, this is Skin-Taker. Our allies have abandoned us. As we fight here, they are landing at the Dathant Heights, half a continent away. I should be concerned by this development, but I know what warriors I command. I know the quality of your murder. I know the depths of your barbarism. Now we are free of the burden of chaperoning lesser warriors, we shall make this place a charnel house, and take freely our share from the blackened remains once the work is done. The frontal assault is over. Split into Nemesis Claws. I am allocating your prey and their expected locations to your helms. Tear this place apart.’

Growls of relish came back to him over the vox as the Night Lords re-formed into their hunting packs. Krutaan, Vankro, and Ciburrion took their claws in three different directions as Zorean and nine others assembled around Dalchian. Garjemak checked the breaching charges at his waist. Ang Heltris slipped his knives in and out of their scabbards, refreshing their coating of hideous toxins. Saryuz shouldered his meltagun, spitting blood onto the deck.

‘What is our prey, Lord Skin-Taker?’ Saryuz asked.

‘Ours is the scalp of the archmagos.’

There were hisses of approval.

They spread out into the templum-capitalis’ labyrinth of passageways, tech galleries, communion chambers and interface cubicles. Dalchian engaged his preysight, knowing all his warriors would be doing the same. They moved quickly, avoiding main thoroughfares and doubling back whenever they heard the sounds of defenders mobilising ahead. They severed power relays and noospheric uplink nodes wherever they found them, slowly excising parts of the vast structure’s system, zone by zone. Deeper, ever deeper, they pierced. Dalchian’s claw had descended four levels when their sabotage began to bear fruit. Illumination grids shorted out and plasma interchanges sighed into silence as fail-safes closed them down. Compartment after compartment disappeared from the templum-capitalis’ central cogitation matrix.

On the twelfth level down, a lift-conveyor rattled past them, the rapidly ascending platform crowded with over a hundred Mechanicus soldiers and constructs. Onzareth mag-locked his boots to the deck and stepped out into the lift-conveyor shaft, hefting his reaper chaincannon. He unloaded a full hopper of high-velocity ammunition up into the underside of the conveyor, inflicting tremendous devastation. Several explosions rained fire and chunks of lift assembly down the shaft. There was an agonising shriek of metal and the platform came hurtling down, bouncing off the inside of the shaft with great, shuddering impacts. Robed forms, twisted and writhing, plummeted after it. Onzareth roared with satisfaction as he heaved himself out of the shaft, but then he was unlucky. The grasping servo-claw of a tumbling datasmith slammed into him, clamping hard and wrenching him from his perch to fall with his victims. Down, down. More explosions echoed from far below. Dalchian pushed his warriors on.

Throughout the enormous templum-capitalis, the Nemesis Claws of the Blades of Atrocity carved their bloody paths. On every level the invaders encountered clades of defence servitors or serried barricades from behind which skitarii units unleashed disciplined volleys of fire. Shrouded by grenade smoke and choke gas, the Night Lords came on, blades flashing, eyes red aglow. There were casualties in every claw. Regardless, they overcame their obstacles quickly, though they were not merciful in their violence. They left as many alive as dead – alive, but broken, severed, paralysed and excruciated. Miserable agony echoed within the reaches of the templum-capitalis, and by steady increments the machine lords of the structure began to taste a very human fear.

Over twenty levels down from their ingress at the balconies, what remained of Dalchian’s claw reached their prey. Archmagos Belenna-Phi-41-Kappa, Plasma Lord of Uzurmandius. Its bulbous mass was suspended above the titanic primary plasma reactor by huge data cables and countless umbilical hoses, from where it directed the colossal energies that were the heartbeat of the forge world. A coterie of heavily armed tech-thralls and gun-skulls surrounded the archmagos, all with their weapons trained on the pitch-black portal where Dalchian’s claw waited, hidden.

Dalchian considered his options. The archmagos had a formidable retinue, and would no doubt be protected by various energy fields and technomantic wards. How to kill it? But then the archmagos spoke, and its voice echoed through all the vox-augmitters in the locale.

‘Defilers of this sacred place.’ The words were delivered in a flat, robotic drone. ‘Surrender, or be destroyed.’

‘Sacred place?’ Dalchian addressed the archmagos from the darkness as he keyed command runes to the rest of his claw. ‘This is just a tinkerer’s hovel. Worthless. This world will be ravaged and brought low, and the lords of distant Mars will not even deign to notice.’

‘Foul heretic. Final warning: surrender or be destroyed.’

Dalchian smiled. His transhuman senses could just make out the hiss-buzz of Saryuz’s meltagun behind him over the blaring klaxons and roar of the plasma reactor.

‘No, half-breed,’ he retorted, ‘this is your final warning. Cut all power or I shall incinerate you and all your works.’

‘Very amusing. Interrogative: how do you hope to achieve that?’

‘By detonating a breaching charge on your reactor’s magnetic containment array.’

Archmagos Belenna-Phi-41-Kappa was about to say something else when the enormous torus beneath it shuddered and split, bathing it in nuclear fire. Dalchian dived aside as a hurricane of raw plasma scoured the reactor chamber clean. The others of his claw pulled themselves out of the wound they had cut in the floor to access the reactor containment systems below. Most of the others, at least.

‘Garjemak?’ Dalchian asked Ang Heltris, who simply shook his head. Between the hours of fighting and the violence of the reactor damage, there were now only four Night Lords left in Dalchian’s claw besides him and Zorean. He could not dwell on the losses.

The whole structure of the templum-capitalis began to shake. The place howled with klaxons and sirens. Fumes vented and circuits overloaded. Servitors cooked in their alcoves and the stink of burning flesh permeated every corridor and chamber. Skitarii, tech-thralls and servitors flooded the halls and passages, but their directing datalinks were flensed by the destruction. Dalchian and his survivors ran through them, stamping them into the deck.

‘Gleskath, we’re on our way to the balconies,’ Dalchian called into his vox, desperately hoping his signal would penetrate the energetic maelstrom consuming the templum-capitalis. ‘Gleskath, can you hear me?’

‘My Lord Skin-Taker,’ came the strained voice of Dalchian’s Thunderhawk pilot through the static. ‘I am unable to rendezvous with you.’

‘Explain.’

‘I am down, my lord. Six miles from the templum-capitalis defensive cordon. Some form of high-gain lasweapon. I am pinned in the wreckage, my lord. I was nearly overrun, but then the Mechanicus forces just turned around. They seem to be coming your way.’ Gleskath grunted and took a pained breath. ‘Die well, Lord Skin-Taker.’

Dalchian processed the news for a heartbeat.

‘Die well, Gleskath.’ He cut the link as they sprinted down a long processional littered with broken skitarii and ruptured tech-thralls. ‘Zorean, are there any shuttle hangars on the lower levels?’

‘Perhaps.’ Zorean’s eye-lenses were stuttering due to a transuranic shell impacting his temple during the fighting. He slammed his palm into his helm’s cogitation unit, and was rewarded as his lenses lit up fully. Dalchian heard over the vox the tick-tick of the legionary blink-clicking through his detailed schematic.

‘Small cargo shuttle bay,’ Zorean confirmed. ‘Gamma-helical zone of the thirty-second level. Looks like our only chance.’

‘All Night Lords, this is Skin-Taker. Our drop-ship has been destroyed. If you can hear me, make for the shuttle bay on level thirty-two, zone gamma-helical. Our blades yet thirst.’

Dalchian and his claw thundered down a maintenance stairwell, taking the steps five at a time. Claw Leader Krutaan’s voice came through on Dalchian’s vox with a snarl of static.

‘We are pursuing one of the last prey-targets, Lord Skin-Taker.’

‘One of the last?’

‘Yes, lord. The other claws hunted well. Did you find your prey?’

‘We made the kill.’

‘Then my quarry is the last. It seems we are close to victory after all, Lord Skin-Taker.’ The dryness in Krutaan’s voice brought a wry smirk to Dalchian’s scarred features. He scrolled across his datafeed and identified Krutaan’s location.

‘The prey-track is convergent with ours. Is it also fleeing to the shuttle bay, Krutaan?’

‘I believe so, my lord. But I shall catch it before it succeeds.’

‘Let it. We may have need of a hostage.’

‘As you wish, my lord.’

The tech-priest emitted a hoot of alarmed binharic as the four thralls that accompanied him exploded into pieces. Dalchian’s claw advanced from the shadows of the shuttle bay, smoke snaking from their bolt pistols. The tech-priest turned to run back the way he had come, but Krutaan stalked through the portal, lightning claws flexing, followed by the remnants of his Nemesis Claw, weapons gore-slicked. The Night Lords surrounded the tech-priest, and then they stilled. In an instant, they morphed from a pack of predators approaching for the kill into a wall of bloody statuary, no less terrifying for their silence. The tech-priest’s hooded head swung frantically from one power-armoured figure to another. The air, tortured though it had already been, was nevertheless rancid with his fear.

‘Tech-Priest Theta-Ibriel-7-4,’ Dalchian addressed the figure, lowering his plasma pistol. ‘If you wish to live, you will obey my commands.’ This one looks almost human.

‘I will never obey a heretic,’ the tech-priest answered, not quite convincingly.

‘Very well.’ Dalchian shrugged. ‘Krutaan, disembowel him and we’ll leave.’

‘Wait, wait!’ The tech-priest threw up his hands as he shrank away from Krutaan’s shimmering lightning claws. ‘Perhaps we can come to an arrangement!’

Dalchian leaned in closer. ‘Speak.’

‘I saw the tactical cogitations.’ The tech-priest spoke quickly. ‘I know you lost your assault craft, and I know you are here unsupported. I could help you escape–’

An enormous, rolling explosion somewhere in the templum-capitalis made the bulkheads around them bend and shake. The tech-priest cowered.

‘What would you ask of us in return?’ Dalchian asked.

‘I am b-bound to defend the knowledge stored within those.’ The tech-priest gestured to several sealed mem-stacks that had been the burden of his thralls before their explosive disassembly. ‘There are some who would see that knowledge redacted, even…’ The tech-priest’s lenses whirred crazily. ‘Even among m-my own order. Let me keep that knowledge safe, and I shall help you escape.’

Dalchian stared at the tech-priest for a very long time, the structure around them echoing with the clamour of its own demise. The hooded figure twitched more and more as the seconds went by and the explosions got louder. At length, Dalchian replied.

‘Done.’

A glitch-shudder of relief made the tech-priest’s mechadendrites rattle, and Dalchian ordered the mem-stacks retrieved.

Klaxons wailed as they boarded a beetle-like cargo lifter designed for suborbital hops. Dalchian felt validated in his decision as he watched the tech-priest set about the lifter controls with impressive speed. There were not many craft that his warriors could not operate, but the requisite time for trial and error was not available to them at that moment. The cargo lifter lurched into the air and the tech-priest threaded the rotund craft skilfully towards the bay doors. Fire had reached the docking cradles, and muffled explosions chased them as they flew. The lifter zipped out into a darkling sky still tormented by electrical storms and whipping rain. Dalchian cast a gaze at the Night Lords within the small cargo hold.

There were just eleven of them.

‘Zorean, can you raise any of the others?’ Dalchian asked.

‘I have been trying, my lord.’

Krutaan looked up. ‘I heard Vankro’s claw die. Of Ciburrion’s I know not.’

‘I cannot identify any other vox-transponders, my lord,’ Zorean said over their private link. He drew a breath to say more but stopped short. Dalchian turned away.

The lifter climbed and climbed. From a sliver of window Dalchian saw cohorts of skitarii and armoured Mechanicus units enclosing the templum-capitalis, which was spewing fire and molten metal into the twilight. His helm disconnected with a hiss and he pulled the dented piece of armour from his head, feeling the cold of the shuttle interior on his pale, scarred skin. The tech-priest spoke.

‘Now we are airborne, what exactly is our destination?’ He lifted his cowled gaze to Dalchian, faintly glowing lenses adjusting. Dalchian leant over and keyed the orbital coordinates of the Abjuration into the shuttle’s guidance cogitator without a word.

‘As quickly as possible, cog-priest,’ Zorean said firmly.

‘Ibriel is my customary designated non-binharic appellation.’

‘Just. Fly.’

‘Acknowledged.’

Dalchian sat in silent, furious contemplation. In the templum-capitalis, he had at least had the benefit of distraction. Fighting and killing. Now he was confronted with the reality of his betrayal. The liquid smile of treacherous Thelissicus taunted him.

‘Should I hail Lord Thelissicus’ forces, Skin-Taker?’ Zorean asked, teeth bared. ‘Demand an explanation?’

Dalchian shook his head. ‘We must regroup.’

‘Lick our wounds?’ Krutaan jibed.

‘Staunch your pride.’

After several hours, the wallowing lifter was at last closing on the Abjuration’s position. Tech-Priest Ibriel keyed several hails, waiting a minute between each one. Then he brought up some incomprehensible readouts on his oculus. After a time, he turned in his seat and looked directly at Dalchian.

‘No voidships on auspex. My lord.’ The honorific sounded clunky on its first use, but there was no jest in Ibriel’s tone. The tech-priest seemed unable to speak further. Dalchian leaned forward and punched a rune key on the command console of the lifter. An armoured shutter creaked as it retracted from the forward viewport, bathing the lifter’s interior with Uzurmandius’ sickly albedo. After a few moments, tiny flashes began resolving against the abyssal black of the void. Glimmers of reflected light betraying drifting pieces of dull metal. Dalchian stared, immobile. The tech-priest continued to speak haltingly.

‘The returns are consistent with… with a debris field, my lord.’

Dalchian stared out of the lifter’s viewport, but saw only the smile of Thelissicus.

‘What now, Lord Skin-Taker?’ Zorean quietly asked, after a time.

Dalchian stood at the viewport for several minutes more, the silence broken only by the hum of the lifter’s flight systems. At last he spoke.

‘Hail the Crimson Slaughter flagship. Tell them the enemy has destroyed our frigate and that we beseech Lord Thelissicus for his generous aid.’

Saryuz spat on the deck. Others snarled in incredulity, but Dalchian continued.

‘Let him think us naïve to his treachery. Let him draw us close in ignorance. Then, once we are deeply indebted to his charity, we shall tear the flesh from his bones and scour his memory from the galaxy.’

His survivors’ wrath shifted into murderous appreciation.

Slowly, deliberately, Dalchian replaced his helm, engaging the systems with his armoured collar in a series of clicks. His eye-lenses burned crimson as he turned to face the last of his Night Lords.

‘Our blades yet thirst.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike Vincent fell in love with Warhammer while peering over his friend’s shoulder at a copy of White Dwarf when he was nine years old. When not writing he spends as much time as possible around a campfire in the woods, with his wife and his dog. His work for Black Library includes the Night Lords novel The Remnant Blade, and the short stories ‘The Vengeful Dead’, ‘Exterminator’ and ‘Blades of Atrocity’.

An extract from Night Lords: The Omnibus.

A lone asteroid spun in the stillness of space. Tens of millions of kilometres from the closest planetary body, it was clearly no natural satellite belonging to any of the planets in the sector.

This was good. This was very, very good.

To the keen eyes and knowing smile of Kartan Syne, the hunk of rock twisting endlessly through the dead space of Ultima Segmentum was a thing of beauty. Or rather, what it represented was a thing of beauty, because what it represented was money. A great deal of money.

His vessel, a well-armed bulk trader by the delightfully ostentatious name Maiden of the Stars, sat in a loose orbit around the vast asteroid below. The Maiden was a big girl, and she threw her weight around when it came to tight manoeuvres, but while Syne hated a little meat on his women, he loved a little bulk to his ship’s hull. The sacrifice of speed for greater profit was worth it.

Pirates were no issue. The Maiden bristled with weapons batteries, all bought with the profits of his mining runs. Often he’d settle for a finder’s fee, but in cases like this – and cases like this were few and far between – he felt the need to fall into orbit and set his servitor teams on the surface to start digging. They were down there now, lobotomised lords of their own little mining colony. It had only been a handful of hours since planetfall, but already his automated crews were hard at work.

Lounging in his command throne, Syne watched the occulus screen as it displayed the asteroid spinning below, grey-skinned and silver-veined, a massive shard of untapped profit. He glanced at the data-slate in his hand for the hundredth time that hour, reading the figures from the planetary scan. He smiled again as his dark eyes graced the numbers next to the word ‘Adamantium’.

Holy Throne, he was rich. The Adeptus Mechanicus would pay well for a hull full of precious, precious adamantium ore, but better yet, they’d pay a High Lord’s ransom for the coordinates of this rock. The trick would be to leave enough ore here for the Mechanicus’s exploratory vessels to confirm the intense value, but still have a cargo hold full of collateral when he approached them. Given the amount of the rare metal woven through the vast asteroid below, that wouldn’t be a problem, not at all.

He glanced at the figures again, feeling a smile break out across his handsome face. The glance became a gaze, and the smile became a grin. This smirking leer was broken less than three seconds later, when proximity alarms began to ring across the Maiden’s untidy bridge.

Servitors and human crew moved about the circular chamber, attending to their stations.

‘A report right about now would be just wonderful,’ Kartan Syne said to no one in particular. In answer, one of the servitors slaved to the navigation console chattered out a babble of binary from its slack jaws.

Syne sighed. He’d meant to get that servitor replaced.

‘Well, I’m none the wiser, but thanks for speaking up,’ Syne said. ‘How about an answer from someone who isn’t broken?’

Blood of the Emperor, this was bad. If another rogue trader had chanced upon this site, then Syne was entering the murky waters of profit-sharing, and that would end in tears for all concerned. Worse yet, it could be the Mechanicus itself. No finder’s fee, no hull full of rare ore, and no room to negotiate, either.

Navigation Officer Torc finally looked up from his monochrome screen and the bright runic writing trailing across it. His uniform was about as official as Syne’s own, which meant both men would have looked at home in an underhive slum.

‘It’s an Astartes vessel,’ Torc said.

Syne laughed. ‘No, it’s not.’

Torc’s face was pale, and his slow nod halted Syne’s laughter. ‘It is. Came out of nowhere, Kar. It’s an Astartes strike cruiser.’

‘How rare,’ the trader captain smiled. ‘At least they’re not here for the mining, then. Bring us about and let’s have a look at this. We might never see one again.’

Slowly, the view in the occulus changed from a gentle blur of stars to settle on the warship. Vast, dark and deadly. Jagged, long and lethal. Midnight blue, wreathed in bronze trimmings, blackened in places from centuries of battle damage. It was a barbed spear of violent intent: the fury of the Astartes in spaceborne form.

‘She’s a beauty,’ Syne said with feeling. ‘I’m glad they’re on our side.’

‘Uh… She’s on an approach course.’

Kartan Syne turned from the majestic view to frown at Torc. ‘She’s doing what now?’

‘She’s on an approach vector. It’s bearing down on us.’

‘No,’ he said again, without laughing this time, ‘it’s not.’

Torc was still staring at his data display screen. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘Someone give me its transponder code. And open a channel.’

‘I’ve got the identification code,’ Torc said, his fingertips hitting keys as he looked into his screen. ‘It reads as the Covenant of Blood, no record of allegiance.’

‘No allegiance code. Is that normal?’

‘How am I supposed to know?’ Torc shrugged. ‘I’ve never seen one before.’

‘Maybe all Astartes vessels do this,’ Syne mused. It made sense. The Astartes were famously independent of traditional Imperial hierarchy and operation.

‘Maybe.’ Torc didn’t sound too sure.

‘How’s that channel coming along?’ Syne asked.

‘Channel open,’ murmured a servitor, its head attached to the communications console via several black cables.

‘Let’s get this sorted out, hm?’ Syne lounged in his throne again, clicking the vox-caster live. ‘This is Captain Kartan Syne of the trading vessel Maiden of the Stars. I have claimed this asteroid and the profit potential therein. To my knowledge, I am in no violation of any boundary laws of the local region. I bid you greetings, Astartes vessel.’

Silence answered this. A pregnant silence, that gave Syne the extremely uncomfortable feeling the channel was still live and the Astartes on board the other vessel were listening to his words and choosing not to reply.

He tried again. ‘If I have erred and claimed a source of profit already marked by your noble forces, I am open to negotiation.’

‘Negotiation?’

‘Shut up, Torc.’

Torc didn’t shut up. ‘Are you insane? If it’s theirs, let’s just go.’

‘Shut up, Torc. Do the Astartes even mine for their own materials?’

Again, Torc shrugged.

‘We have precedent to stake the claim,’ Syne pressed, feeling his confidence ebbing. ‘I’m just trying to keep our options open. Need I remind you that there’s also the matter of over a hundred servitors and several thousand crowns worth of heavy-duty mining equipment on the surface of the asteroid? Need I remind you that Eurydice is down there with the digging teams? We won’t get far without her, will we?’

Torc paled and said nothing for a moment. Needless to say, he’d been adamant in his advice to keep Eurydice on board and curtail yet another of her ‘I’m bored, so I’m going’ jaunts off the ship.

‘The cruiser’s still bearing down on us,’ Torc said.

‘Attack vector?’ Syne leaned forward in his throne.

‘Maybe. I don’t know how these vessels attack. They have one hell of a forward weapons array, though.’

Syne liked to think he was a genial soul. He enjoyed a laugh as much as the next man, but this was getting quite beyond the realm of light entertainment.

‘Throne of the God-Emperor,’ Torc swore in a soft voice. ‘Its lances are primed. Its… everything is primed.’

‘This,’ Syne said, ‘has crossed the border into ridiculous.’ He clicked the vox live again, failing to keep a note of desperation out of his voice. ‘Astartes vessel Covenant of Blood. In the name of the God-Emperor, what are your intentions?’

The reply was a whisper, edged with a smile. It hissed across the Maiden’s bridge, and Syne felt it on his skin – the chill of the first cold wind that always precedes a storm.

‘Weep as you suffer the same fate as your corpse god,’ it whispered. ‘We have come for you.’

The battle did not last long.

Combat in the depths of deep space is a slow-moving ballet of technology, illuminated by the bright flickers of weapons fire and impact explosions. The Maiden of the Stars was a fine enough vessel for what it did; long-distance cargo hauling, deep-range scouting and prospecting, and fighting off the grasping attentions of minor pirate princes. Its captain, Kartan Syne, had invested years of solid profit into the ship. Its void shields were well-maintained and crackling with multi-layered thickness. Its weapons batteries were formidable, comparable to an Imperial Navy cruiser of similar size.

It lasted exactly fifty-one seconds, and several of those were gifts; the Covenant of Blood toyed with its prey before the killing strike.

The Astartes strike cruiser drew closer, opening up with a barrage of lance fire. These cutting beams of precision energy slashed across space between the two vessels, and for several heartbeats, the void shields around the Maiden lit up in flaring brilliance. Where the lances stabbed against the shields, a riot of colours rippled around the trader ship, like oil spreading across the surface of water.

The Maiden’s shields endured this beautiful punishment for a handful of seconds, before buckling under the warship’s assault. Resembling a popping bubble in almost all respects, the void shields collapsed with a crackle of energy, leaving the Maiden defenceless except for its reinforced hull armour.

Kartan Syne had the wherewithal to get his bridge crew together by this point, and the Maiden returned fire. The barrage from the trader’s conventional weapons batteries was monumentally weaker than the lance strikes of the Astartes ship. The Covenant of Blood drifted ever closer, its own shields now displaying the rippling colours of attack pressure, except – much to the unsurprised dismay of Syne – the warship’s shields showed no strain at all. The approaching vessel ignored the minor assault. It was already firing its lances a second time.

This time, with the shield bubble popped, the lances ate directly into the Maiden’s hull. Predatory incisions were made in the steel flesh of the prey vessel, and the lances tracked and turned, beams of cutting laser fire neatly slicing through the lesser vessel’s armour. The Maiden had barely responded, yet it was already listing, losing stability, and shaking apart from half a dozen detonations across its length. The Covenant had picked the paths of its lances with due care, targeting explosive sections of the ship: the engine core, the plasma batteries, the fuel chambers.

The strike cruiser broke off, its engines roaring into the silence of space to put distance between itself and its crippled prey.

On the Maiden’s bridge, as his ship rattled and shook with myriad explosions, Kartan Syne glared into the occulus screen as the graceful warship speared away. For a sickening moment, he recalled when he’d hunted grey lynxes on Falodar, and the time he had seen one of the great cats kill one of the equine beasts that served as its preferred prey. The lynx had struck in a blur of movement, ripping great wounds in the horse’s throat and belly, then retreated to watch the creature bleed out and die. He’d never forgotten that. At the time, he’d suspected the planet was tainted somehow, to breed such behaviour in the fauna.

‘You remember Falodar?’ he asked Torc.

There was no response. The bridge was a maelstrom of shouts and alarms, as the crew and servitors fought hopelessly to hold the ship together. The noise annoyed Syne. It wasn’t like their struggles could actually achieve anything now.

Syne was still watching the occulus when the final lance strike came. He saw it reaching out towards him, a beam of migraine-bright white that hurt his eyes, seeming to stretch an impossible distance across the stars.

It arrived in a flash of burning light that blessedly silenced the panic around him once and for all.

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