‘If the mon-keigh are wholly defeated, lady, then the Circuit will be lost to us – one cannot strike bargains with Chaos.’
‘I know it,’ she snapped. ‘We must keep the defence in being, but at a level of desperation which makes them more amenable to our… suggestions.’
‘A fine line.’
‘My life has been the treading of fine lines, Ainoc. Ready another falcon. It is time for me to make planetfall and confront these fanatics with the hopelessness of their position.’
‘Fanatics do not lose hope, Te Mirah – that is what defines them.’
‘They are rational beings nonetheless – not by our standards of course, but they will lend an ear to what I have to say.’
‘You should not go in person,’ Ainoc said, shaking his head.
‘I can read their intent more clearly than anyone else upon the Brae-Kaithe. It is my function, and this is my destiny.’
‘Then I shall come with you, and my guardians shall be at your back.’
They looked at each other, not quite a test of wills – there was too much feeling there, a love not yet burned away by the centuries.
‘Very well, Ainoc. I should have a suitably impressive bodyguard, I suppose, if I am to convince these animals of what I am. Prepare the falcon, and bring along with you whoever you see fit – you are the follower of war after all.
‘And then the Brae-Kaithe must leave us. We are too close to the enemy here, and even the warp-addled minds of these invaders will sense our presence sooner or later.’
Ainoc bowed.
They chose the night, for during the day the fighting in the city reached a level of ferocity that appalled even the cold senses of the eldar.
The gates fell one by one, and were shunted open by the massive armoured hulks the mon-keigh named Dreadnoughts. Behind them came even larger tracked monstrosities: Land Raiders, Predators and Rhinos, all of Imperial design, but twisted, rebuilt and reconfigured to meet the tastes of those who now despised the Emperor of mankind with the same fervour that their far-off ancestors had once brought to his worship.
In the darkness, the bellowing engines rose high and loud under carefully laid smoke-barrages as the vehicles fought their way through the booby-trapped ruins, and Stormbirds made attack runs against the trench lines of the defenders, escorted by ancient Doomfires.
It was as though the enemy aircraft had been resurrected from some forgotten machine-grave, and raised corrupt and blasphemous to defile the very skies with their payloads.
In the midst of this, the Dark Hunters fought on, retreating metre by bloody metre to the secondary defensive lines which Dietrich and his men had held at such cost through the first invasion.
They wreaked havoc on the advancing enemy, cutting them down by the hundred, and hidden heavy-weapons teams would ambush the lumbering armour of the enemy as it lurched through the rubble, before moving to new hideouts.
The cameleoline of the Dark Hunters and these vicious ambush tactics served them well. Soon the main roads leading to the Armaments District and the citadel were clogged with burning vehicles.
But the Hunters paid for their temerity. Fifteen more of them died on that retreat, and only six of these had their gene-seed retrieved. Apothecary Passarion fought through squads of the enemy to harvest the precious genetic material, but sometimes, in the flash of promethium fire or the all-consuming holocaust of heavy ordnance, there was nothing left to bring back.
So it was that these brothers had their legacy taken from the Chapter forever, and the gene-pool of the Hunters was irrevocably diminished.
The cloaked eldar grav-ships were sleek as spearheads, and they made barely a whisper as they dived through the atmosphere, bypassing the lumbering Chaos transports, the Stormbirds and attack-fighters which now clogged the skies above Ras Hanem. When they appeared on augur, they were dismissed as an atmospheric blip, a glitch, and the war went on around them while they glided to rest within the walls of Askai a scant kilometre from the Imperial lines, their landing so soft it barely disturbed the dust.
‘Now, to survive initial contact,’ Ainoc said, and as one, he and his guardians drew their weapons. The wicked edge of his sword gleamed with a light like the sun seen through deep water. It was a Witchblade, a rune-marked relic of the Il Kaithe craftworld, and it had tasted the blood of every race known to the eldar – including that of those they were here to meet.
‘No weapons will be drawn, or they will shoot us out of hand,’ Te Mirah said. ‘You will all walk behind me, and you will be humble, Ainoc. We must don the guise of supplicants with these animals – their pride is immense, and their tempers are famed.’
‘I obey,’ Ainoc said. But he bared his teeth as the words came out of his mouth.
Perhaps fifty eldar had come down in the grav-ship, and these now stood about in the dust, the spirit stones upon their armour alight, shuriken catapults ready in their hands.
‘Stay here under Callinall,’ Te Mirah said to the others. ‘I will call if I am at need.’
‘If they raise a hand against you, they will lose it,’ Ainoc said, his long face alive with murder. But he clicked his sword to his back-harness, and his followers slung their catapults.
‘I will speak – none other,’ Te Mirah warned them, and then led them off through the quivering ruins, the night alive with tracer-fire and artillery exchanges, an orange glow overhead which blotted out the stars.
Brother-Sergeant Orsus, the biggest Space Marine in the Chapter, was forward of the line when he saw the glimmer of white come gliding through the shifting smoke towards them.
His infared augmented the sight, and the slow-walking file of figures became clear. Orsus had a century with Mortai Company, and wore the platinum stud of long service – he knew instantly what he was looking at. He spoke to his squad over the fitful vagaries of the vox.
‘Tertius, look to your front. Hold fire until I give the word.’
The Space Marines were hidden and perfectly camouflaged in the broken remains of one of the outer warehouse districts, close by the wall which encircled the manufactoria.
‘Eldar,’ Brother Feyd hissed. ‘What are they doing here? And walking into our lines as brazen as a bronze snake.’
‘Something is coming on the net, sergeant – do you hear it?’
It was a woman’s voice, speaking in low tones that to a normal human being would have sounded surpassingly lovely in their music. To an Adeptus Astartes, it was alien trash – but the language could be understood. It was Gothic, archaic but intelligible, somewhere between Low and High, and spoken slowly and distinctly as though the hearers were considered halfwits or children.
‘We mean you no harm, and wish only to speak to your commander. We have news of great portent for him, and we must discuss it at once. Your enemy is our enemy also. We mean you no harm. We will touch no trigger or blade. Let us enter your lines in peace.’
The line of eldar was flagged up in Orsus’s targeting resolution. He could have shot down half of them in three beats of his twin hearts, and his finger was tense on the trigger of the bolter, drawing down the necessary pressure gram by gram.
Then he released it in disgust. It would not do. Xenos scum or not, such a development had to be run past the captain; it was potentially too important to wipe away in a flurry of bolter fire, no matter how satisfying that might be.
‘Keep them covered, brothers,’ he rasped. And to the leading xeno, he said:
‘Stand fast where you are.’
The eldar behind their female leader flinched as the giant Space Marine rose up out of the rubble, a curtain of dust falling from him. He had been well hidden, even to them.
There was a red gleam in his eye-lenses and he kept his bolter trained on Te Mira’s face.