Deathwatch - Novels 02 - Warrior Coven.pdf - Deathwatch - Pomidoros

A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

WARRIOR

COVEN

С. S. Goto

С. S. Goto «Warrior Coven»

I T IS THE 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor his

sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by

the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his

inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power

from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for

whom a thousand souls arc sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly

die.

Y ET EVEN IN his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance.

Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only

route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic

manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on

uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes,

the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms

arc legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the

ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to

name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold

off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

T O 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. These are the tales of

those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has

been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and

understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no

peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the

laughter of thirsting gods.

С. S. Goto «Warrior Coven»

CHAPTER ONE: TRAITORS

T HE TWO FIGURES moved in utter silence and with incredible speed. They were only suggestions of images, lingering on the edge of

visibility like the shadows of a lurking death. They flicked and whirled with motion, flashing like darkness in the deep shade of

the dimly lit corridor. Moments of deepest quiet darted out from their movements, as though they were emitting shards of

nothingness, covering themselves with a shower of imperceptibility. The total silence in the corridor hissed with unnatural

menace, as though it were an aberration, and the dark figures bathed in it like composers in their own symphony.

As the two dark eldar wyches worked, the air between them started to shimmer and liquefy, as though curtains of watery darkness

were being drawn across the corridor. Sparks of light from the glowing veins that ran through the mysterious, shimmering

substance of the ceiling and floor caught the unearthly ripples like bursts of starlight. As the liquefaction intensified, so the

shadowy motion of the wyches was cast into even deeper darkness, silhouetted against the erratically glimmering curtain. They

dashed from one side of the corridor to the other, making adjustments to the devices that they had already fitted to the walls,

touching their fingers to buttons that did not compress or click but which glittered as the wyches' flesh approached.

At an unspoken and invisible signal, the two wyches snapped into stillness and then dropped to their knees, bowing their heads

towards the warp field that they had just created in the bowels of the vast Ulthwe craftworld. The rippling field started to pulse

with waves, scattering droplets of darklight over the kneeling figures. The waves rose and gathered momentum, crashing into

interference patterns that sizzled with unspeakable power.

Somewhere in the maze of corridors behind them, the wyches could hear the metallic trampling of running feet. They presumed

that the effete Ulthwe had finally realised what was going on. Pathetic: it was about time. Involuntarily, both of them snarled their

upper lips in disgust at their feeble and distant brethren, but they did not move. They had no fear of the eldar guardians - the

lightlings. They knew what was about to emerge from the warp gate that they had constructed in front of them, and in comparison

the closing eldar were insipid, puny and spineless.

Having seen the horrors at the command of the haemonculi, fear took on a whole new meaning, and there was nothing that the

Ulthwe could do to perturb the wyches. Despite themselves, the two interlopers smiled, letting the dim light spark off their black

teeth; knowing that their own superiors would happily exact more terrible suffering on them than their enemies could possibly

imagine liberated them for the fight to come. There was always a small chance that they would suffer even if they returned

triumphant, but part of their souls rejoiced in this masochistic prospect. The gentrified and pompous eldar had no idea what the

gods had cast into their future. They didn't even know that their gods were dead, the short-sighted fools.

As the footsteps grew louder, so the ripples and waves in the warp field grew more violent. Refusing to look up, Kroulir and

Druqura held their gazes into the polished deck, letting the reflections of the warp dance and flash beneath them, watching the

erratic and spectacular patterns gradually resolving themselves into familiar shapes. Fragments of the field splattered out of the

gate, spitting icy pain over their backs as they remained bowed in patient deference.

Behind them, the sounds of footfalls shifted in tone, as though they were no longer muffled by walls or corners in the corridor. It

seemed that the eldar guardians had finally reached the two wych raiders. As if to confirm their calculation, a cloud of tiny

projectiles whined past the bowed figures, slicing into their scant, sculpted armour, peppering the devices that they had implanted

into the walls, and splashing into the immaterial substance of the warp field itself. With suitably masterful timing, tendrils of warp

started to reach out of the shimmering pool, questing into the thick, soupy reality of the craft-world passageway. They snaked and

grew, reaching and thickening, intertwining and interlacing, oblivious to the hail of shuriken fire that sizzled out from the eldar

guardians who were charging down the corridor towards them, behind the bowing wyches.

The running eldar guardians were shouting, sending blasts of sound and psychic noise thundering down the passage. Kroulir could

hear the fear in their voices and sense the urgency in their thoughts. As tiny shuriken shards of toxic pain bit into her back she

grinned, running the tip of her tongue around the glistening points of her upper teeth. Not long now. She could feel the saliva

moistening her mouth in anticipation as she stared fixedly down into the deck, still unmoving.

Finally, the warp field before the wyches erupted, as though struck from the other side by a tsunami of energy. Waves of sha'iel -

warp energy - broke and crashed out of the gate, washing over the two dark eldar wyches like an ocean over rocks, covering them

in freezing pulses of agony. Kroulir thrilled. Behind her she could hear the gasps of the eldar guardians and sense them fighting

against their own panic - it was humiliating to think that those pathetic lightlings shared anything in common with her.

Another rush of sha'iel flooded out of the gate, swamping the deck with immaterial pools. Then a curdling shriek pierced the icy

air. It was a single, tremulous tone, like a tortured soul. Another joined it, and another, until in an instant there was a chorus of

agonising sound searing out of the warp gate, filling the corridor with memories of pain and thoughts of misery. Inchoate yells and

screams ricocheted around the corridor, the warcries of the approaching eldar guardians blending into the curdling shrieks that

emanated from the warp gate. Kroulir could hear a couple of the Ulthwe stumble.

There was a clatter as weapons were dropped, and Kroulir could imagine the guardians clutching at their oversensitive ears like

weakling mon-keigh, howling like children. She stole a glance over at Druqura, and saw that the young wych had not moved at

all; she remained stooped in a reverential bow, and there was a faint glint from her bowed face as the dark-light of the warp

reflected from her eyes and the tips of her pointed teeth.

A sudden rush erupted through the air above the heads of the wyches, but neither of them had to look. They knew what was

emerging from the warp gate. They could hear its signature in the way that the screams of the eldar changed, stopping abruptly.

Only Qurael, mistress of the beasts, could bring such a shocking silence into the cacophony of battle. The wyches grinned, finally

unfolding from their reverential bows and spinning into pirouettes as they unsheathed their blades and turned to face the eldar

behind them.

С. S. Goto «Warrior Coven»

Still dripping with sha'iel from the warp gate, Quruel stood in the centre of the corridor between the wyches and the eldar

guardians, her hair a snaking nest of fiery tendrils, with a warp whip crackling darkly in one hand and a staff-mounted talon

spinning in the other. She was flanked on both sides by ungodly, barbed and scaled beasts. They were like small dragons,

gnashing and thrashing around Quruel's legs, spitting fragments of sha'iel like saliva. Their ruddy, rust-red scales seemed to swim

and shift over their bodies, twinkling with black stars, as though they were tiny, refractive windows into the immaterium itself.

And their eyes burnt like pitch, deep and soulless. The only parts of them that looked material and real were their green claws,

their yellow teeth, and the barbed silver spikes that ran from the crests on their heads to the very tips of their lashing tails. They

were horrifyingly real.

A FORMATION OF black and red Reaver jetbikes flashed out into the jungle clearing sprays of projectiles hissing out of their nose

mounted splinter rifles. The dark eldar riders were craned forward over the controls, leaning along the scaled nose cones of their

vehicles with their wild, long hair flooding out behind them like jet-streams. They were howling like warp beasts, and their eyes

glinted with maniacal passion. As they sped into open ground, a volley of fire smashed into the front of their line, shattering their

formation as the riders peeled away to avoid the onslaught.

The leading rider pulled up short, smoke and debris pluming out of his ruined Reaver. Just as the machine's engine core detonated,

the rider vaulted to the ground, flipping neatly and turning a crisp somersault before landing with his splinter pistol already drawn.

Before he could get off a single shot, his body was punched and riddled with a tirade of fire, throwing him shredded to the ground.

The eldar of Ulthwe's Dark Reaper Aspect Temple, dug into their bunkers around the edge of the clearing, tracked the flight of the

speeding Reavers with their reaper launchers, lashing flurries of rockets out through the foliage as though it were paper. They

stood with their leg stabilisers planted firmly against the massive report of their fearsome weapons, unleashing an inferno that

even the dark eldar should fear. Ulthwe may not host as many of the Aspect Temples as some of the other eldar craft-worlds, but

they had always provided a home for the sinister Dark Reapers.

So close to the lashes of the Eye of Terror, the Dark Reapers of Ulthwe were constantly vigilant for signs of the return of their

Phoenix Lord, Maugan Ra, the Harvester of Souls, who had vanished into the great Eye when the lost craftworld of Altansar had

been swallowed whole. For now, Ulthwe was the closest place to home.

Truqui roared his fury into the wake of the speeding Reavers as they skirted the circumference of the glade, darting between the

streams of fire that flooded out from his fellow Aspect Warriors. His reaper launcher was a formidable weapon, especially at

range, and its constant recoil was driving his braced feet steadily into the ground. He yelled again, willing the tiny rockets into

ever increasing ferocity, driving them after the treacherous raiders as though convinced that his hate for the darklings was a

weapon in itself. But the rear afterburners of the Reavers were becoming faint as the dark eldar penetrated more deeply into the

jungle climate of Ulthwe's forest-domes.

Without lowering his weapon or releasing the trigger, Truqui spat in disgust. 'Reapers!' he yelled, keeping his eyes fixed on the

vanishing darklings, watching the threads of reaper rockets tracing their path behind them. Before he could utter another word, his

command seemed to be fulfilled: a black Wave Serpent drew out of the tree-line behind him, hovering a metre above the earth, its

twin linked shuriken catapults and cannons sizzling with constant fire.

Without turning Truqui released one hand from its brace along the elegant barrel of his singing weapon and snatched it into a

signal. At the sign from their exarch, the squad of Dark Reapers broke their firing lines behind him and vaulted into the anti-grav

transport tank. The Wave Serpent accelerated forward, speeding after the rapidly disappearing Reavers. As it flashed past him,

Truqui reached out his free hand and caught hold of a brace on the side of the vehicle, lifting himself up onto its hull without

taking his eyes off his distant prey.

The massive guns of the Wave Serpent coughed and spat shuriken fire after the Reavers, but the dark eldar jetbikes were too fast

and too manoeuvrable to present effective targets weaving erratically between the trees. From the tank's roof, Truqui trained his

eyes on the darklings, letting his reaper launcher twitch and scan automatically with his line of sight. He knew that the guns of the

Wave Serpent would not be precise enough from this range, but he was an exarch of the Dark Reapers and he lived for moments

like this. Squinting his eyes in momentary concentration, Truqui released a volley of rockets from his weapon, targeted into a

small, empty clearing in the trees in the distance. There was nothing there.

Whether by divination or calculation, the reaper rockets arrived at exactly the moment when a dark eldar Reaver streaked into the

clearing. The warheads punched into the exhaust tubes that protruded out of the back of the jetbike, shattering the rear of the

engine block and detonating inside the energy core. The Reaver was wracked with explosions along the line of the exhaust, and

then it erupted into a sudden fireball as the engine caught, incinerating the bike and the rider instantly.

Truqui held his gaze on the dying flames for a second and then started to track his next target, realising in dismay that the Reavers

were much too fast to be caught by his Wave Serpent. Just as the realisation dawned on him, a bank of Ulthwe guardians slid up

alongside the transport tank on gleaming black and silver jetbikes. Truqui turned to acknowledge the timely reinforcements, and

the squadron leader nodded in recognition, before gunning her bike and streaking off in pursuit of the Reavers, a squadron of

glittering jetbikes falling into formation behind her.

Watching the jetbikes streaking off in pursuit of the vile infiltrators, Truqui cursed beneath his breath, unwilling to accept that his

Dark Reapers could not finish the job themselves. Beneath his feet, he could feel the Wave Serpent decelerate, as though attuned

to the disappointment flowing from his mind. Then, with a sudden start, it lurched back into acceleration and Truqui grinned. The

vehicle banked sharply, angling away from the chase and plunging into the deep jungle like a shark into water. This was not over

yet.

С. S. Goto «Warrior Coven»

T HE TWO INQUISITOR lords sat in silence, their features almost invisible in the half-light, hidden in the deep shadows cast by their

heavy hoods. Vargas peered over his steepled fingers at the concerned expression on the face of his oldest acquaintance, his eyes

glinting with untold pain.

'We have heard nothing for centuries,' muttered Seishon, as though merely voicing his thoughts.

'Perhaps there has been nothing to hear?' offered Vargas, but even he was unconvinced.

'You are too charitable, my old friend.'

'We have no reason not to trust in our arrangements. They were made by devout servants of the Emperor with the glory of the

Imperium in mind. We must not doubt ourselves, especially not in such testing times,' replied Vargas, his voice tinged with

defensiveness.

Seishon unfolded himself from his chair and stalked over to the viewscreen that dominated the wall. A million stars twinkled back

into his bright eyes, filling his mind with expansiveness and icy void. The image was steady and crisp; the old inquisitor might

have been looking out of a window at a local starscape, instead of off into the terrible distance. The joint Inquisitorial substation,

Ramu-gan, was positioned as close to the Eye of Terror as was safe, but it was still a very long way away.

'Yes,' he whispered, half to himself. 'These are indeed testing times.'

As he spoke, Seishon leaned closer to the screen, letting his proximity trigger the zooming mechanism that scrolled the designated

quadrant into closer focus. A deep red mist was faintly visible around the minor constellation of Circuitrine. The red colour had

been deliberately lightened and enhanced on the screen, but the mist was real enough. It was a red so deep that it was almost indis-

tinguishable from the blackness of space around it. Not for the first time in the last few weeks, Seishon wondered whether

anybody else had yet noticed it.

'Re-phase and unfilter. Bring up the Eye.' Still seated at the long table in the centre of the room, Vargas snapped the command to

an unseen servitor.

The screen flickered and then flashed with colour, forcing Seishon to step back and shade his eyes from the sudden burst of light.

The speckled darkness was instantly replaced by a supernova of colours: bright reds and pinks burst out through clouds of blues

and purples, riddled with explosions of dark green and rings of yellow. It was as though an impossible quantity of toxic chemicals

had suddenly erupted into flames and set the galaxy itself ablaze.

'It is utterly invisible in the lashes of the Eye of Terror,' observed Vargas, as though reading his friend's mind. 'I would be

surprised if anyone else has noticed it.'

Seishon nodded slowly as he stared into the blinding maelstrom of warp energy that defined the Eye of Terror on the screen. It

was certainly true that the gentle red mist around Circuitrine was imperceptible against the massive rush of energy discharged

from the Eye every second.

'I do not share your optimism, old friend,' he said, finally, turning back to face Vargas at the table. 'If we can see it, I am sure that

there are agents in the Ordo Malleus who can also see it very clearly. They will not be dissuaded of its importance simply because

we have not heard anything about it from the aliens...' Seishon trailed off, realising that he had gone too far. He and Vargas may

well be inquisitor lords, and they may be secreted away in the Ordo Xenos sanctum of Ramugan, but walls nearly always had ears,

especially in a facility of the Inquisition. And Ramugan was no ordinary facility.

'If it were a major storm, we would have heard,' insisted Vargas, carefully avoiding vocalising the identity of the agents from

whom they would have heard. 'Look at where the emissions and eddies are, Seishon! They are pluming out around the Circuitrine

nebula. You know full well that our... associates have been based there for untold centuries. They would have told us if there was

anything to concern us - that is the very meaning of the coven, after all!' Vargas chose some of his words carefully, but his

confidence betrayed him.

'Perhaps,' replied Seishon, as he turned back to the viewscreen. 'But we have heard little from these associates since the coven was

formed. I am not sure that we can trust them. I am not even sure that they will remember us at all, when the time comes.

'If the Ordo Malleus have not yet seen this, and if they discover that we have known about it for weeks, there will be questions,

Vargas. This is their territory, after all. Why should we be monitoring that quadrant so carefully? Why didn't we share our

intelligence with them immediately? These are not questions that I would be prepared to answer before a Hereticus Commission.'

'There will be no questions. Who would dare to interrogate two inquisitor lords of the Ordo Xenos? When was the last time that

we received any intelligence from our associates in Malleus, or even Hereticus? Sharing is not what the Inquisition does best,

Seishon, not even here in Ramugan,' replied Vargas dismissively. 'Besides, we have nothing to hide, Seishon. Our souls are

untarnished.'

'I hope that you're right, old friend,' said Seishon sombrely. 'I hope that you're right.'

E VERY FACE IN the council chamber turned to gaze on the beautiful features of Eldressyn, her translucent white robes cascading

freely around her elegant form, as though caught in a divine breeze. She had uttered the words that none had dared to voice for

untold centuries, and her startling blue eyes shone with a radiance too terrifying to comprehend.

'There is not strength enough amongst the Sons of Ulthran,' she repeated quietly but with such force that they seemed to penetrate

directly into the minds of the eldar on the council. ' We cannot face this threat alone.'

' What you imply is a kind of sacrilege,' hissed the angular and pale face of Ruhklo. He was by far the oldest seer on the council,

and his sibilant voice carried the liquid gravity of the years. 'Do you presume that this council did not foresee these events many

centuries before you had even seen this chamber? Do you really want to suggest that we are not prepared?'

There was a murmur of assent from the others. It was unthinkable to believe that incidents of this magnitude would have gone

unnoticed by the Seer Council. The mighty Eldrad Ulthran himself should have seen them on the horizon from a distance of

several millennia.

Deathwatch - Novels 02 - Warrior Coven.pdf

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