Overfiend Read online

  So the White Scars would destroy the heavy armour manufactorum on the moon of Lepidus Prime. The Raven Guard would put an end to the threat on the planet, and so preserve the Imperial colony. At the edge of the system, the Salamanders would wait in the Verdict of the Anvil for the Overfiend to show itself.

  Yes, an ambitious plan. Sound as far as it went. Krevaan accepted the merits of its conception. He was troubled by its lacunae. For whatever reason. Orks were creatures of aggression and impulse. Krevaan had rarely known them to do anything for a reason. But ‘rarely’ wasn’t ‘never’. When there was discernible reason behind ork actions, that was when they were at their most profoundly dangerous, as Armageddon had learned to its cost. The orks had not hit Lepidus as a raiding force. This was a campaign. The manufactorum was proof of that. And now silence from Temur and the White Scars. Signs that something was calling very forcefully to the orks.

  ‘If we’re just getting started,’ Mulcebar said, ‘I wish our start were more assured. We cannot raise Temur on the vox.’

  ‘Nor can we.’

  ‘And your situation?’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘When a Raven Guard tells me something is interesting,’ said Mulcebar, ‘I brace myself for the worst.’

  ‘There is an eldar force combating the orks.’

  ‘Oh. That is interesting.’

  ‘Puzzling, too.’ Unknowns on the moon. Unknowns on Lepidus Prime. Too many. Mulcebar was right to be wary. ‘To all appearances, their primary objective is to prevent the orks from taking Reclamation.’

  ‘Why would the eldar concern themselves with the fate of one of our cities?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The Salamander was silent for a moment, taking in the full contours of the mystery. Then he said, ‘What are your plans?’

  ‘The orks are more numerous and better equipped than the Navy’s reports to us had suggested. The eldar might be useful. The orks won’t see us coming.’

  Mulcebar chuckled. ‘Does any foe see the Raven Guard coming?’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ Krevaan admitted. ‘Good hunting, brother.’

  ‘And to you.’

  Krevaan turned back to his officers. ‘Brother-Sergeant Caeligus, take your squad to the bridge.’ The span over the gorge was the clear focus of the struggle between the two xenos races. He would show eldar and greenskins alike that control of the gateway to Reclamation belonged to neither. ‘Prepare it for demolition. Do not destroy it until you receive my command. Sergeant Behrasi, how large is the ork flanking movement?’

  ‘It is a considerable one. No heavy vehicles, but a number of smaller ones. They’re putting a premium on speed.’

  ‘Your estimation?’

  ‘If they manage to come up behind the eldar, that war is finished.’

  ‘Then we shall prolong it.’

  Caeligus and his men approached the bridge through the city. They had the streets to themselves. The orks were still a few kilometres distant, but the roar of their invasion had already arrived. An endless howl filled the air and bounced off the façades. The echoes of gunfire and cannon shells were a constant thunder. The sound was a terrible promise of destruction to come.

  The citizens of Reclamation were off the streets. They hid behind their walls. Caeligus understood the mortals’ impulse to seek refuge. He wondered, though, whether they understood how pointless the attempt was. If the orks entered the city, there would be no defence, no shelter. No mercy.

  The human occupation of Lepidus Prime was a relatively recent one. Reclamation had been established only in the last century. The planet was verdant, fertile, temperate, and free of xenos taint, but the system’s proximity to Octarius had made it an uncertain proposition. When it had appeared, to the more optimistic members of the Adeptus Administratum, that the Overfiend’s war with the tyranids would keep both xenos horrors occupied with each other indefinitely, permission had been granted for colonisation. The founders of Reclamation were the descendants of the noble families of Orrok, the survivors who had fled the ork takeover of Octarius hundreds of years before.

  The spread of the colony had been slow. Reclamation remained the only major population centre. There were a few small clusters of homes on farmland some distance to the east, but most of those had been abandoned as the ork invasion had dawned. The humans had withdrawn into their city. Caeligus had heard a few of the exchanges that his captain had had with the planetary governor, Aloysius Kesmir. The man’s hololith revealed him as a thin creature, whose bones seemed slightly too long for his skin. He spoke with a mixture of fear and stubbornness. He was terrified of the orks, but determined to stand his ground.

  Or at least remain on it, while someone else actually fought the war. Caeligus had the impression that the governor was a good exemplar of the populace. He was unimpressed, but the possible unworthiness of the people of Lepidus was of no concern to the Raven Guard. They had not come to defend a colony. They had come to exterminate an enemy.

  As he passed through the city, though, he looked at it with interest. Its architecture was not what he had expected in something so new. He saw plenty of prefab rockcrete, but the city was just old enough that the colony’s initial homogeneity had eroded. Modifications and additions were breaking down the uniformity, differentiating one hab zone from another, creating a sense of local character.

  None of this was surprising. What did surprise Caeligus was that there were frequent signs of much greater age. Some of the variations in construction appeared original. There were foundations, just visible above ground, that were not rockcrete. They were something else, a material that appeared to be almost organic. Caeligus had the impression of something that had been grown. He saw one building after another that had clearly been built atop a pre-existing structure. Yet he knew that, prior to the colonisation, Lepidus Prime had been uninhabited for as long as it had appeared in Imperial records.

  When the squad reached the bridge, he saw that it, too, was an anomaly. The surface of its span was not of Imperial construction. There were three arches across its width: one at each end, and one in the middle. The iconography chiselled into their surface was Imperial in subject, but the images looked like emendations. Caeligus suspected they had been added to wipe the memory of something blasphemous from the face of the marble.

  He walked to the foot of the bridge. On the other side of the gorge, the eldar were fighting hard. Most of them were mounted on skimmers the same deep crimson as their armour. Their movements through the trees were as sinuous as their strikes were rapid. They waged war with a quicksilver, alien elegance. They would be, Caeligus could tell, dangerous opponents.

  But what Krevaan had heard was true. Their position was untenable. They should retreat much further. Given the size of their force compared to the overwhelming numbers of orks, the eldar were using the wrong tactics. The orks were primarily infantry, and Caeligus could hear tanks and blasphemous Dreadnought imitations crashing their way through the forest. The eldar should be using their greater mobility and speed to full advantage. They should already have crossed the bridge, pulling back to return in harrying attacks against the ork flanks. Instead, they were holding their ground. They weren’t just risking their own annihilation; they were ensuring it.

  The only possible reason for not retreating was an attempt to defend the city. The eldar were mysterious, unknowable, and untrustworthy. But they were not fools. Yet a suicidal defence of a human city was an action so beyond fathoming that Caeligus wondered if the entire race was mad.

  ‘What do they think they’re doing?’ Havran asked.

  Caeligus shook his head. ‘If they think they’re doing anything other than offering themselves up to a slow slaughter, they’re mistaken. But their insanity is not our concern. Let’s get that bridge ready to fall.’

  Setting the melta bombs took a matter of minutes. The eldar were dying, but
managing to hold the orks at bay. Caeligus knew them to be skilled warriors. He was still impressed. And more and more puzzled. They were fighting with last-stand desperation. Caeligus could think of few human forces that would give up so much for a city whose strategic value, in the final analysis, was nil. He believed in the defence of Reclamation, certainly. But the primary mission was the extermination of the orks. Perhaps the Salamanders would feel differently.

  He spoke into his vox-bead. ‘The bridge is ready, Shadow Captain.’

  ‘The orks are still on the other side?’

  ‘Both races are. We can cut off access to the west side of Reclamation at a moment’s notice.’

  ‘Good. Stand ready, but do nothing.’

  Vaanis was holding a detonator. He was watching Caeligus for the signal. The sergeant shook his head. ‘Shadow Captain,’ he said, ‘at this moment, neither the orks nor the eldar are approaching the city. We can finish our job here and join your assault.’

  ‘Remain at your current position,’ Krevaan said. ‘Do not destroy the bridge without my express order. Keep me informed of any changes in the situation. Am I clear?’

  ‘You are, Shadow Captain.’

  Krevaan signed off. Caeligus said to the squad, ‘We wait.’

  ‘For what?’ Havran asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Caeligus admitted. He was frustrated by Krevaan’s decision. He was not, however, embarrassed to reveal that he did not understand the reasons behind it. The captain treated information with the care due any great weapon. He was not deceptive with his battle-brothers. Caeligus did not think Krevaan had ever kept secrets that the company should have known about. But he guarded his thoughts jealously. Caeligus had never been able to read his face.

  He tried. He had tried earlier, during the briefing. Krevaan’s expressions were as opaque as if he were wearing his helmet. Caeligus knew the captain would not delay the demolition of the bridge without good motivation. He also knew that he would not be privy to those motives until Krevaan chose to reveal them. If ever.

  Caeligus accepted all of this, but it still frustrated him.

  He walked to the edge of the bridge. He watched the war on the other side. He watched skill struggle with ferocity. He saw the inevitable draw closer. He saw extraordinary ability ground down a bit at a time, pushed closer and closer to oblivion. Behrasi should be here, he thought.

  The other sergeant had a better appreciation for the finer aspects of tragedy.

  A few thousand metres to the south of the bridge, Behrasi was a shadow among shadows. He was positioned at the edge of the tree line, before the narrow strip of land that ran between the forest and the gorge. The orks’ flanking advance had one quality that Behrasi appreciated: it was direct. They were taking the most obvious route to trap the eldar in a vice: loop around the edge of the forest and back up again. They were charging at full speed, a mass of fury operating more on instinct than strategy. That made them easy to anticipate. Their route forward was obvious.

  ‘There is a certain luxury in a foe who obediently enters the ambush,’ Krevaan said.

  Behrasi would have sworn the Shadow Captain hadn’t been at his side a moment before. His years of service in Eighth Company had taught him to expect Krevaan’s sudden appearances, even if he was never able to see his commander approach. Krevaan inhabited the shadows like no other warrior in Behrasi’s experience. He carried the night within him. It was present, a cloak waiting to cover him, even in broad daylight. The shadows began in Krevaan’s eyes. They lived there and emerged from there, as if the captain could blind whatever met his gaze.

  Sometimes, when they felt particularly in the dark about the reasons behind Krevaan’s decisions, and they attempted a futile parsing, Behrasi and Caeligus would wind up at the point of their captain’s physical obscurity. Caeligus maintained that Krevaan was hard to read. Behrasi disagreed. He thought Krevaan was hard to see.

  At a superficial level, Krevaan’s features were not invisible. He had the same bleached pigmentation of all the Raven Guard. His features were sharp, the hollows of his cheeks and eye sockets so deep that his flesh seemed to be being absorbed by his skull. The effect was enhanced by his pronounced brow and cheekbones. His eyes were almost hidden. They were narrow, dark, glittering judgement. They saw everything, and revealed nothing.

  And always, the shadows. Was it possible that his features themselves cast them? Was his face his own mask? The idea had occurred to Behrasi more than once. At other times, he assumed that he was seeing Krevaan’s supreme skill at work. He had mastered wraith-slipping to the point that it was his natural state of being. To pass unseen and unheard until the enemy’s final moment had gone beyond instinct with Krevaan. It was no different from breathing, or from the beat of his hearts. Every action, at every moment, evaded the gaze of the observer. Behrasi took some pride in his own wraith-slipping, but even when Krevaan was standing directly before him, his impression of the captain was uncertain. Krevaan existed in the gaps between perception. It seemed to Behrasi that it was an act of conscious choice for Krevaan to step out of the shadows – a choice he rarely made. But this was not sorcery. It was a skill as material as the wielding of lightning claws.

  Now Krevaan stood beside him, surveying the ambush preparations. They could hear the orks coming closer; perhaps still as much as a thousand metres away. The trap was set about a quarter of the way up the east side of the forest. The land was still high here, the gorge still deep. To the north, the eldar and the rest of the ork army were setting the woods on fire with their struggle.

  ‘The greenskins do not have too many routes open to them,’ Behrasi said.

  ‘Oh?’ Krevaan gestured to the trees behind them. ‘Are those trees an impenetrable barrier?’

  ‘For this style of attack…’

  ‘Precisely. These orks are wed to speed. Yet our arrival was clear. They have chosen to ignore us because we complicate the narrative of their battle.’

  Behrasi smiled. ‘I don’t often think of the orks as complicated.’

  ‘Few do. Which is why the struggle for Armageddon was so desperate. The orks are fully capable of shadow raids. There are many dead warriors who have learned that lesson too late. Our good fortune is that these orks have not thought of that.’

  ‘They’re running with their first impulse.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The answer was so noncommittal that Behrasi asked, ‘You think they aren’t, Shadow Captain?’

  ‘No, I think they are. But there are elements here that we do not understand.’

  That was true. Behrasi gestured towards the battle in the north. ‘I don’t understand that.’

  ‘We are missing information,’ Krevaan said. ‘Our knowledge is incomplete, and that leads to mistakes.’ After a moment’s pause, he added, ‘As the orks are about to learn.’

  If Behrasi had spoken those words, he would have smiled. He imagined that Krevaan did, though he could not tell. It was night, they were in the shadows of the trees, and the captain was the ghost of a shape. Then, even as Behrasi looked, Krevaan was gone.

  Behrasi turned his attention to other shadows around him. They were the members of his squad. Each Raven Guard was in position, a motionless absence ready to uncoil and become a streak of lethal dark. Two of the absences were huge: the Dreadnoughts Karom and Raust. Four squads of Eighth Company were waiting at the edge of a long strip of land. They were only on one side, under cover of the woods. Krevaan had ordered this distribution of the forces. It doubled the extent of the kill zone. There would be no enfilading fire.

  ‘We won’t need it,’ Krevaan had said. He had picked a particularly narrow strip of land. There were only about ten metres between the forest’s edge and the drop into the gorge.

  The orks were close now. A huge snarl fell on the land. It came from engines, and it came from throats, and it was the sound of rampage. To the south,
where the land dipped towards the plain, the orks appeared. At the head of the charge were warbikes. They fouled the air with exhaust, the noxious clouds darkening the night still further. They were followed by four-wheeled vehicles, each with a gunner on the rear turret. Behind them, after a gap, came the infantry.

  Behrasi was startled by how small the gap was between the vehicles and the foot soldiers. The terrain was rougher here, and the route narrow, forcing even the most reckless ork riders to slow down. Even so, the other orks were fast. They were keeping pace with their mounted kin. They had travelled many kilometres since splitting off from the main force, and been moving at a full run the entire way. As the horde stormed past him, Behrasi watched the greenskins closely. There was no sign of exhaustion. They ran as if they were fresh. They were sprinting, and they were speeding up.

  Krevaan had said it: Our knowledge is incomplete. The unanswered questions were about more than the eldar presence and their ferocious defence of Reclamation. There was something unusual about the orks. They were faster and more exultant than Behrasi was used to seeing, even in a race defined by its gigantic appetite for war. They were also bigger. The entire mob, even its most mundane members, was larger than the norm.

  Don’t underestimate them, Behrasi thought.

  His next thought was, Kill them.

  The lead bikes ran over pressure sensors, triggering cluster mines. Swarms of bomblets flew upwards and exploded. The first bikes caught the brunt of the blasts. They disintegrated in the fireballs of their fuel tanks.