‘There is an Infinity Circuit at the heart of every eldar craftworld. It contains the souls of our dead, and protects them from being devoured by the warp when we die. The one we seek will contain the last essence of the eldar who once lived upon this planet, their memories, their knowledge. It is something beyond price to us, this thing.’
Fornix said nothing for a moment. There was real emotion in Ainoc’s voice.
‘They buried it here, then, to protect it,’ Fornix said at last.
‘Probably. It is hard to imagine the chaos and destruction of that time, the darkest chapter in the history of our race. Were it not for your deep delving on this world, it is possible the Circuit would have lain hidden and unknown until the Kargad Star died, and the system with it.’
‘Lucky for you mankind came along then.’
‘Lucky for us,’ the eldar said tonelessly, and spoke no more.
They tramped along for another hour – by Fornix’s reckoning they had now marched some eight kilometres from the acid river, and still the crystalline and wraithbone arches rose endlessly above their heads.
Until they stopped, up ahead. The light changed, grew ruddy and green and moved in and out of every spectrum, and there was what looked almost like a gateway, drawn to a point as fine as the tip of a sword.
Ainoc said something in his own tongue, and the eldar picked up the pace. Brother Gad peered at the auspex. ‘Energy readings up ahead, first sergeant.’
‘Life-forms?’
‘No, the readings are strange. And there is a power source also.’
‘Combat formation,’ Fornix said crisply. ‘Keep up with the xenos, brothers, and eyes on all sides. There’s no telling what witchery is up ahead.’
It reminded them somewhat of the Reclusiam in Mors Angnar: a dome rising in perfect strata of black stone above them, set with crystals, and in the centre a single plinth upon which the source of the light flickered and pulsed.
Ainoc gave a glad cry, and led his people into the chamber, kicking up the silver dust with his feet. He stood and looked down upon the ancient device and raised both his hands in what seemed to be a prayer, whilst the other eldar knelt around him reverently.
It was egg-shaped, about the size of a human head, and within its translucent confines light whirled and rippled like liquid, sparkling with tiny momentary stars. It was as though an entire galaxy had been confined within it and set spinning. Something even in Fornix’s cynical hearts responded to the sheer beauty of it.
Ainoc took off his helm, set it down, and they saw that he was smiling, the expression sitting strange on that implacably cruel face.
‘Isha, I give thanks,’ he said. ‘Khaine, I bow to thee.’
With great gentleness, he took the Infinity Circuit in his hands and lifted it from the plinth.
And as he did, there was a hum in the chamber, a deep, vibrating melody which seemed to bring the very stones which surrounded them to sudden, thrumming life.
It strengthened, became a low quake which set the dust in a shimmer. Fornix spat a curse.
‘Time to move, xeno,’ he called to Ainoc. But the tall eldar was staring into the heart of the Infinity Circuit, as rapt as a dreaming child.
There was a series of crashes, and from the walls of the chamber there fell massive basalt and crystal blocks, each twice as tall as a Space Marine. They tumbled to the ground, raising the silver dust in a cloud which momentarily baffled all of Fornix’s auto-senses. But there was movement in that glittering fog, massive shapes moving which had not been there before.
The eldar all seemed paralysed. Fornix strode forward and took Ainoc, shook his arm. ‘Wake up, you damn fool!’
The warlock seemed to struggle. His lifted his head and his eyes were blank. ‘So many,’ he whispered, ‘there are so many of them, and they have been here so long. What memories they have!’
A voice boomed out in the musical, sibilant tongue of the eldar. It sounded strangely metallic, as though echoing from within a steel tomb. Then a shape loomed out of the whirling dust, towering far above the eldar and the Space Marines. A two-metre-long smooth skull with a tapered end, featureless but for one bright stone glowing in the centre of it, and a skeletal mechanical frame below, bipedal, clumping towards them.
Two others like it moved in from the other sides.
Ainoc finally seemed to come to his senses. ‘Wraithlords,’ he cried. ‘My brethren!’ – and he lapsed into his own tongue, speaking urgently.
The three creatures, or machines, or whatever they were, halted. They listened to him a moment, and then all three raised their right arms.
Ainoc clasped the Infinity Circuit to his chest, and shook his head, screaming something unintelligible.
Three blasts of promethium fire boiled out towards him and met in a single flaring conflagration. The warlock shrieked, transformed in a moment into a living torch. In his arms the Infinity Circuit flared out in a flash of blue light, before his carbonised arms dropped it, and it rolled across the floor.
The other eldar opened up on the three wraithlords with their shuriken catapults, and the high whine of the projectile weapons filled the air, needle-thin shards of metal propelled at supersonic speeds around the chamber. They skittered and ricocheted everywhere.
Fornix darted forward, ducked below another flamer blast and slashed at the leg of one of the eldar wraithlords with his power fist. There was a flash of sputtering energy, and his fingers gouged deep into the alien metal, digging through the armour to find the fibre-muscles and wiring beneath. He ripped out a huge handful of it, and the thing crashed to one knee. Its hands came up, reaching out as though to strangle him, and one closed over his helm and began squeezing.
He heard the ceramite creak, and for a second his helm display shorted out and he could see nothing but buzzing static. Then the grip fell away, and he was able to raise his power fist blindly and bat himself free from the damaged wraithlord. Beside him, Brother Heinos stood. His servo-arm had bitten clear through the wraithlord’s other arm, and the fyceline torch at his shoulder was busy melting a hole in the thing’s huge skull plate.
‘Get up, brother,’ Heinos said, and he heaved the wraithlord onto its back. But the thing was already struggling to its knees again, flame dribbling from its remaining fist.
Fornix rose, firing his bolt pistol into the felled wraithlord’s head, the muzzle so close that it blackened the alien metal. He saw an eldar warrior thrown clear across the chamber to smash like a broken toy into the far wall. Two more were staggering like puppets, alight and burning. His own brethren were firing steadily, and though the armour-piercing bolter rounds were striking home, and gouging holes in the armour of the wraithlords, the machines seemed to shrug off the damage.
One came striding forward to where the Infinity Circuit lay at the foot of the plinth. It booted an eldar warrior aside, and Brother Steyr jumped up and clambered upon the thing’s back, holding on to the exhaust vents there like a man riding a wild steed. He clicked out three grenades and wedged them into the wraithlord’s workings under the great protective shell of its skull, then jumped free.
But the thing caught him in mid-air, twisting with incredible speed. Energy discharges flared white along its knuckles as it tore Brother Steyr apart, even as the grenades went off and blew it to pieces in its turn. It crashed to the ground on top of the mutilated remains of the Space Marine, and its promethium reservoir exploded, dousing the entire chamber in flame.
‘Get out of here!’ Fornix shouted over the vox. ‘Heinos, get that damned thing!’ he pointed to the Infinity Circuit.
The Techmarine bent obediently and retrieved the egg-shaped artefact. As he did, two surviving eldar shouted in protest and fired their shuriken catapults at him. The monomolecular edges of the tiny missiles their weapons fired glowed in a white stream as they coursed into the Techmarine’s armour. He grunted, and fell to one knee. Blood oozed out of the shredded ceramite.