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Ambition Knows No Bounds - Andy Hoare

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Ambition Knows No Bounds

Andy Hoare

‘Give me a reading, Joachim,’ Brielle Gerrit shouted against the raging wind. ‘I can’t see a damn thing!’

‘Augur says two-fifty, ma’am,’ Brielle’s companion and advisor called back, his voice barely cutting through the howling cacophony of the storm. ‘We should have visual any–’

‘There,’ Brielle called, and halted, craning her neck to look upwards. Against the churning, dark, purple clouds there was revealed an even darker form. She attempted to gauge its height, but her senses were confounded and unable to decipher its alien geometry. The rearing, slab-sided structure could have been standing scant metres in front of Brielle, or it could lie many kilometres distant.

‘Two-fifty.’ Brielle repeated her advisor’s estimate of the range to their destination. Even as she looked upon the structure’s form, its cliff-like planes appeared to shift, as if new surfaces and angles were revealed by the slightest change in perspective. ‘If you’re sure. Is everyone ready?’

Brielle turned to inspect her small party, its members appearing from the all-enveloping shroud of the storm. She lifted the visor of her armoured survival suit, the cold air rushing in to sting her exposed cheeks. Squinting against the wind, she noted with satisfaction the deployment of the dozen armsmen that accompanied her from her vessel, the Fairlight, which waited in high orbit above this dead world to which she had come in search of riches for her rogue trader clan. Each was heavily armed, and appointed in rugged armour, their faces obscured by heavy rebreather units. Their leader, the taciturn Santos Quin, stepped forwards, shadowed by the far smaller form of Adept Seth, her senior astropath.

‘All is ready, my lady,’ Quin answered, his tattooed face just visible through his own suit’s visor. ‘But the storm rises,’ he added, casting a glance upwards at the churning skies.

‘Understood,’ Brielle replied, nodding, before looking to the astropath. ‘And you, adept, have you anything to report?’

The astropath stepped forwards, bowing his helmeted head to his mistress. Through his visor, the adept’s face was visible as a gruesome mass of scar tissue; his eyes were hollow pits and his nose and mouth were barely discernible. The soul binding, the ritual by which the astropath had been exposed to, and sanctified by, the Emperor’s Grace, had blasted his body such that the man was in constant pain. Yet, although the normal range of human senses was denied to him, Adept Seth was possessed of far greater perception than any ordinary man.

++This place is dead to me, mistress,++ the astropath replied. His voice was little more than a guttural rasp, so ravaged was his throat, yet Brielle heard the man’s words clearly for he spoke with his mind, directly into her own. ++Dead, yet I hear echoes, reverberations of ancient thoughts, or the hint of a sleeper’s dreams. I cannot tell which.++

Brielle caught the sneer that crossed the face of Santos Quin at the astropath’s words, and knew that the man’s feral world origins made him distrustful of Seth and his powers. Yet, she knew what the astropath referred to, for she imagined that she too had discerned the very faintest of echoes, distant thoughts carried on the unquiet winds. She knew not what alien mind might have given rise to such thoughts, but she believed, hoped, relied upon the fact that they were mere echoes of some ancient and long-dead power.

‘Well enough,’ Brielle said, lowering her visor. ‘We continue, with caution.’

Brielle stood before the pitted, black wall of the vast alien structure. Although the surface was but an arm’s length in front of her, she felt compelled to reach out and lay a palm upon it, just to be certain. Even through the tough glove of her survival suit, Brielle felt the cold radiating from the stone-like material, a cold that touched not only her skin, but her soul too.

‘Mistress.’ Brielle withdrew her hand at the sound of the astropath’s voice. ‘Please, try not to–’

‘I know, Seth,’ Brielle replied. ‘I know.’ She looked around, and addressed Quin. ‘We need to find a way in. Have your men spread out.’

The warrior nodded silently, and moved away to speak to the armsmen. In a moment, they, as well as Brielle’s advisor Joachim Hep, had departed, all bar Quin himself having moved out in search of a means of entering the vast structure. Brielle saw Quin test the mechanism on his boltgun, before lowering his sensor goggles to scan the depths of the storm. He would stand vigil over his mistress, no matter what.

Brielle resumed her study of the alien form. She craned her neck upwards, noting that either the storm clouds had lowered or the ever-shifting planes of the structure had elongated, for now the top appeared to be lost to the storm above. She pondered, not for the first time, the risk inherent in this expedition, but knew that vast riches were to be claimed on such worlds as this. As next in line to sovereignty of the mighty Clan Arcadius, it fell to Brielle to carve her name across the galaxy, to pierce the darkness in the name of the Emperor, to face whatever might lurk in the depths of the void and to overcome it, for the sake of humanity. And, she mused, smiling coyly behind her visor, to amass untold wealth and undreamed-of glory along the way.

It was Brielle’s hope, and that of her clan, that this unnamed world, far out in the void between spiral arms, might yield such riches. The galaxy was strewn with the ruins of civilisations far older than the Imperium of Man, and planets such as this were home to dusty tombs sealed before mankind even looked to the skies above ancient Terra. Such tombs, when discovered, had been known to contain relics of long-dead alien races, artefacts of wonder for which the pampered nobility of the Imperium’s ruling classes would pay a staggering price just to possess. The vast majority of these items were considered curiosities or art, having no discernible function. Others could be studied, their functions and exotic abilities unlocked. Brielle knew that dilettante collectors and self-proclaimed experts in the proscribed field of xenology would give their all for such items.

Yet, Brielle was struck with a cold sense of dread, an unutterable feeling that something was terribly amiss with this dead planet.

‘Something stirs, my lady,’ Adept Seth warned, as if giving voice to an unnamed fear gnawing at the periphery of Brielle’s consciousness.

‘What do you sense, Seth?’ Brielle answered, casting around her for any sign of danger. Quin hefted his boltgun across his broad chest, and took a step closer to his mistress.

‘I sense… a guttering flame… the flame is the soul, all but extinguished, yet it refuses to die…’

‘I need a little more than that, Seth,’ Brielle responded, biting back a less politic remark. ‘Are we in danger?’

‘Something knows we are–’

Before the astropath could complete his sentence, the vox-channel burst into life. Howling static assaulted Brielle’s ears, before the voice of Joachim Hep cut in. ‘…a way in. Repeat, we have found a way in.’

‘Stay where you are,’ Brielle answered, not entirely sure whether or not Hep had heard her through the raging atmospheric interference. ‘Quin, lead the way.’

‘Recent damage, Joachim?’ Brielle asked of her advisor. Though aged, the man stood almost as tall and broad as a Space Marine. She waited as he studied the vast rent in the cliff-like side of the alien structure, his eyes taking in every detail with practiced skill.

‘I would say so, ma’am,’ Joachim replied, without turning his gaze from the sight before him. ‘Millennia of storm damage brought this about, but the damage itself has only recently occurred.’

Brielle’s gaze moved from her advisor to the great fracture in the alien tomb. Though only a metre or so wide, the crack ran upwards what must have been many hundreds of metres, or would have been, if it weren’t for the damnable geometry of the place. Brielle moved closer, aware of Quin keeping pace behind. She leaned in to examine the ragged edge of the crack, to glean some idea of the material and what might have damaged it.

++Time, my lady,’ Adept Seth spoke into Brielle’s mind. ‘The only force which could damage such a place as this, is time itself.++

Brielle raised an eyebrow and cast a wry glance at her astropath, aware that he had read her surface thoughts. She turned back, leaning in yet closer to the damaged surface. She fancied she could see signs of repair, if only at a minuscule scale. Perhaps this place could heal itself, she mused. Perhaps that explained how it could have withstood the ravages of this storm-wracked world for so many long, lonely aeons.

‘Let’s go,’ Brielle said, stepping into the fracture before Quin could take the lead.

Scant metres into the fracture, Brielle was plunged into utter darkness. She paused, allowing senses other than sight to come to the fore. She extended her awareness as far as she was able, attempting to gain some idea of her surroundings. She strained her hearing. The storm still raged outside, but now its howl was muffled and distant. She heard too the action of the rebreathers worn by her companions, and discerned the sure, heavy tread of Santos Quin as he sought to overtake her, to take the lead lest the party encounter danger and his mistress be threatened.

Savouring the darkness for but a moment longer, Brielle reached her hand to the mechanism at the side of her helmet, lowering a set of goggles over her visor. The headset buzzed as lenses whirred to focus on what Brielle’s own eyes could not register. The goggles were capable of registering many different wavelengths, overlaying what they perceived over Brielle’s own vision.

The blackness was replaced by a kaleidoscopic riot of colours, shot through with grainy static. Brielle adjusted a control at the side of her helmet, and the image resolved into something she could make sense of. Before Brielle, there stretched a circular tunnel into which she and her party had stepped. She looked behind, confirming that the tunnel stretched off in both directions, evidently running perpendicular to the outside wall through which, via the fracture, they had entered.

Satisfied that no immediate danger presented itself, Brielle used the control to cycle through a range of settings, the sight before her changing from one of vivid green hues to another of black with violet highlights, to yet another of purest white with shadows of turquoise. She paused on a vista of deep greens, seeing on the curved wall nearby an intricately carved icon. She stepped closer, aware that Quin did likewise. The icon was revealed to be a series of circles and lines, joined together into what must surely have been some long dead alien script.

‘Joachim.’ She turned to address her advisor, and he stepped forwards, past Santos Quin, who grunted as he stepped aside. ‘Set your readers to sigma-twelve, and look at this.’

Joachim, his goggles already lowered, reached to his helmet and adjusted the controls. A moment later, his head scanned the walls of the corridor.

‘I’ve never seen its like, ma’am,’ Joachim Hep replied after a long pause. ‘Though it puts me in mind of…’

‘Of what?’ Brielle replied, uncertain she wanted to hear her advisor’s answer.

‘Of the machine scripts of the servants of the Omnissiah, ma’am.’

‘But this place is ancient,’ Brielle answered, as much to assuage her own uncertainties as to answer her advisor. ‘It predates the Mechanicus by countless millennia. There can be no connection.’

‘Quite, ma’am,’ Hep replied, nodding gravely to Brielle.

‘Then let’s continue,’ Brielle ordered, ‘this way.’ She made to set off, but this time allowed Santos Quin to take the lead. The feral-worlder raised his boltgun as he advanced into the darkness, using his own set of goggles to pierce the gloom. The warrior used silent hand signals to direct his armsmen to the proper order of march, ensuring Brielle, Hep and Adept Seth were well protected in the centre of the line. Brielle allowed Quin to do so, grudgingly reminding herself that she would, after all, inherit the Warrant of Trade of her rogue trader house, and Quin was only doing the duty her father had bestowed upon the warrior.

Before making off along the tubular corridor, Brielle paused briefly, imagining she heard, at the very edge of perception, an out-of-place sound. She imagined she heard a metallic chitter. She listened intently, but heard no more. With a glance back beyond the rearmost armsmen, she set off.

‘Not a sound,’ Brielle whispered over the vox-net, edging forwards to peer over Quin’s shoulder. She knew she need hardly have given the order, for the armsmen of the party followed the feral-worlder’s lead, and he himself stood motionless and silent against the curved wall at the end of the corridor.

Brielle found herself gazing into a vast blackness. She was about to lower her goggles to scan the space in a different wavelength when she caught a glimpse of a dim, green glow amidst the darkness. Focussing, her eyes adapted, and after a few minutes she could make out a hint of the space before the party. What she saw made Brielle gasp.

The passageway in which her party waited opened out into some manner of chamber so vast that Brielle was struck by a nigh-crushing sense of insignificance as she tried in vain to comprehend its benighted dimensions. Brielle imagined herself an insect crawling across the worn flagstones of the mightiest of cathedrals, the vaults above lost in darkness. A cold shiver ran through her body as she realised the notion was not entirely her own imagining.

So vast was the space that its surface appeared to rise and fall with the curvature of the planet on which it stood. Brielle dismissed the notion; a structure so large would have been detectable from orbit, and the tomb had not measured so vast on their approach. Nonetheless, the geometry of the place played all manner of tricks upon Brielle’s senses. Just as she had been unable to gauge the true size of the structure from outside, she now found herself unable to estimate its internal dimensions, and the sensation was deeply unsettling.

As Brielle’s eyes adjusted further to the gloom, she saw that across the dark floor of the chamber there lay a gently undulating sea of what must surely have been dust. How long had this place stood, she pondered, that its floor should have accumulated such a layer of sediment? Looking closer, she saw low dunes, their crests gently aglow with the ever-present green illumination.

‘Joachim,’ Brielle addressed her advisor, who stood at her back. ‘Do you see a source for the back light?’

Brielle waited while Hep scanned the vast space before them, then turned her head to look to his face as he answered. ‘I do not, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘It may be the result of some background effect, an energy source not detectable by the augurs.’

‘My lady,’ Quin growled low. Brielle turned her gaze from her advisor to the warrior, instantly alert in response to his tone. ‘Ahead, a hundred paces.’

Brielle squinted as she sought out the point Quin was indicating. After a moment, she found it.

‘Tracks?’ Brielle whispered.

‘Aye, my lady,’ Quin replied. ‘Something small.’

‘Vermin?’ Brielle asked.

‘Possibly,’ Quin growled back. ‘Though I see little for such a creature to hunt.’

Brielle nodded. ‘When?’ she asked.

The feral-worlder glanced back at his mistress. ‘Hours, or decades, my lady. Such is the stillness of this place I can scarcely tell.’

Brielle made to answer, but Adept Seth spoke first. ++An aeon… and a day, mistress,++ he whispered, the sound of his voice whispered directly into her mind. ++An epoch past, yet still to occur.++

Growing uneasy with the astropath’s manner, Brielle replied curtly, ‘Speak plainly, Seth, please.’

The astropath turned his monstrous face towards Brielle. She knew that even though the man lacked conventional sight he was looking straight at her. ‘My apologies, mistress,’ he whispered. ‘I know such things make little sense. But just as your eyes have difficulty perceiving the true dimensions of this place, so too do my own senses. This place is weighted, mistress, weighted with ages impossible for such as us to comprehend. Perhaps the gods themselves—’

‘Enough!’ growled Quin. Brielle’s gaze lingered on the face of Adept Seth for a moment, before she turned back towards the warrior. ‘Such words gain us nothing.’

Brielle took a deep breath, steeling herself to go on, before taking a step forwards into the vast chamber. She glanced back to her party, the dust of impossible ages rising around her boots. Looking back at them, she felt a moment of giddy recklessness, knowing her father would disapprove were he here to witness her actions. An instant later, the feeling passed, to be replaced with the crushing deadness of the tomb. ‘Enough indeed,’ she breathed, and set out across the ocean of dust.

Soon after setting forth across the chamber, the party had come upon the tracks that Quin had spotted from the passageway. The feral-worlder’s hunting senses had told him that some form of insect perhaps a metre in length had made the tracks, and that the fine layer of dust overlaying them told him the trail was not recent. Despite this news, Brielle’s feeling of unease had not been assuaged, but had instead increased the further into the dust sea the party had advanced.

At first, Quin had advised that the explorers should proceed with caution, treading softly lest great plumes of the thick dust carpeting the ground be thrown up with their passing. Brielle was soon forced to countermand this order however, for otherwise they would never have made any progress at all. And besides, she had mused, who might be watching? She had no answer to that question.

As she walked, Brielle attempted once more to gain some idea of the nature of her surroundings. She craned her neck to look upwards, and was immediately greeted with a wave of nausea as the distant planes high above shifted. She looked back to the ground, and a second wave of sickness came over her, causing her to stumble and come to a halt.

‘Ma’am?’ Joachim Hep was at Brielle’s side in an instant, his firm hold grasping the shoulder of her armoured survival suit. A moment later, the rest of the party halted, the armsmen taking guard positions while their taciturn leader worked his way back down the line towards Brielle.

‘I’m fine, Joachim,’ Brielle answered. ‘I’m fine. It’s this place. It plays havoc with the senses.’

‘That it does, ma’am,’ replied Brielle’s advisor, stepping back having satisfied himself that his mistress was able to continue. ‘I cannot read it either.’

At this, Quin interjected. ‘My lady, how much time do you perceive to have passed since we set out across this chamber?’

Brielle looked to the warrior, distracted, beguiled even, for a brief moment by the swirling patterns of his facial tattoos. ‘How much time?’ she repeated, turning her head to look back the way the party had travelled. ‘I would say… Emperor’s mercy…’

‘How long, my lady?’ Quin pressed.

Brielle looked back to the feral-worlder, her throat suddenly dry. ‘Three, three and half…’

‘Minutes?’ Quin asked.

‘Hours,’ Brielle said, the sight of the passageway mouth, a hundred metres behind, still fresh in her mind.

‘…aeons,’ Adept Seth whispered.

‘Behind us,’ Brielle whispered into her vox-link, having subtly disengaged the external amplivox. She made an effort not to change her stance or the pattern of march as the party continued on its way across the dusty chamber.

‘Yes, my lady,’ Quin answered, having followed her lead and adjusted his own communications in the same manner.

‘How long?’ Brielle asked.

‘For me?’ Quin turned his head as he walked, raising an eyebrow sardonically.

‘Fair point,’ Brielle conceded. ‘How long?’ she repeated.

‘No more than thirty minutes,’ Quin said.

‘Can you tell where?’ Brielle asked. Brielle herself had been aware of movement to the party’s rear for several minutes.

‘In this half-light,’ Quin answered, ‘it’s hard to be sure. But, I would say that we are being tracked by one observer, using the folds of the dust as cover, to our rear and left.’

It took a supreme effort of will for Brielle not to turn and look in the direction Quin had described. She could not help but imagine a crosshair aimed at the centre of the back of her head, making her skin suddenly itch beneath her armoured helmet. She felt an irresistible, inexplicable urge to pull the helmet free and shake out her plaited locks, which felt as if they were pasted to her scalp. She shook the notion off, adjusting her step, treading softly through the dust, focussing her every sense behind her for any sign of pursuit.

Brielle imagined she heard a distant voice, so quiet it was little more than a thought. She glanced towards the astropath, and noted that his head was cocked at an odd angle, as if he too were intently listening to something. She focussed upon that distant whisper, half-hearing the forming of alien words, yet not quite able to discern them fully.

++There are more, mistress++ the astropath’s thought-message touched her mind, his withered, scarred mouth not moving at all.

++Where?++ She formed the reply in her mind, unsure whether the astropath would hear her. Evidently, he did hear, for the thought came back immediately, ++Everywhere, mistress. All around us. They slumber… yet they stir.++

With a conscious effort, Brielle closed her mind. She had felt the touch of madness in the astropath’s thoughts, a cold dread verging on the insane. Her eyes met briefly with those of Quin, who nodded to the fore. Whilst Brielle’s attentions had been otherwise engaged, the party had come upon the opposite side of the vast chamber. She looked back, seeing that they had somehow crossed the impossible distance in what felt to her like the course of barely five or six hours.

Brielle stood at the very brink of a wide chasm, cut with unreal precision into the black rock of the alien tomb’s dusty floor. Far below, there emanated a lurid green glow, the same glow, she mused, as had suffused the chamber they had just crossed, yet here it was direct to the point of blinding intensity. Far above, the vaults were lost to blackness, and Brielle saw no other way forwards than to cross the vast chasm.

‘Deploy the line,’ she ordered.

Santos Quin motioned to one of the armsmen, who stepped forwards and unlimbered a heavy grapnel launcher. The man braced his feet wide, and aimed the launcher at a point on the ground across the chasm, some forty metres distant.

‘Fire!’ Quin ordered.

The launcher’s report was deafening, the explosive crack filling the stillness of the tomb. Brielle experienced an instant of profound dread, as if their intrusion must surely be noted, as if the sound would bring attackers down upon them in an instant. She glanced all around, half-expecting the shadows on the black stone walls to resolve themselves into the dreadful forms of long-dead guardians. She shook off the notion, but guessed that the other members of her party shared it. Even Quin was casting cautious looks all about.

Brielle was brought back to the present by the impact of the grapnel as it struck the ground on the far side of the chasm. She watched as the module at the end of the line activated, power hooks springing forth to bite into the stone, before the energy was shut off an instant later, leaving the blades embedded in the ground. The armsman activated the mechanism on the launcher, and the line tightened. Using a similar system of power hooks mounted at the launcher’s base, the armsman secured the device to the ground on the party’s side of the chasm, and stepped back.

Brielle made for the line, before both Quin and Hep stepped forwards to block her path.

‘With respect, ma’am,’ Hep said, bowing as he did so lest he give undue offence. ‘Please, Brielle,’ he continued, his voice low. ‘I cannot allow you to cross first. Your father would have me flayed by the bilge-rippers.’

Brielle suppressed a smile, despite her mild annoyance, for she was ever ill at ease with others taking risks on her behalf. Yet, she knew her advisor, one of her father’s oldest friends, was correct. She smiled gracefully as she returned his bow and stepped aside.

‘And I,’ interjected Santos Quin, ‘cannot allow you, Joachim, to cross first.’ The warrior held up a hand to wave away any objection Hep might voice. ‘I too have duties to observe.’

Brielle watched, amused, as Joachim Hep considered Quin’s words, before he too stepped aside, allowing the feral-worlder to approach the secured grapnel launcher. With a gesture, the warrior deployed his armsmen so as to cover the far side as he prepared to cross. Unravelling a cord from his belt, Quin attached himself to the grapnel line, and lowered himself over the edge of the chasm.

Brielle watched as Quin progressed, slowly at first, but with increasing speed, across the wide chasm. She imagined for an instant that the green light blazing from below flickered for a moment, as if in recognition of the intrusion, but cast off the idea as imagination born of tension. A sound caught her attention, and she looked towards Adept Seth, noting that the astropath was mumbling under his breath, his ruined mouth working, the incoherent words muffled by the helmet of his survival suit.

‘Seth,’ Brielle called softly, mindful of disturbing the stygian silence of the tomb. The astropath appeared not to have noted his mistress’s call. ‘Seth!’ she hissed, her teeth gritted.

‘Mistress?’ Seth replied, finally comprehending that he was being addressed.

‘What is it, Seth?’ Brielle asked, once more forcing down concern at the astropath’s manner.

‘I…’ Adept Seth stammered. ‘I think we should leave now, mistress.’

‘Leave? What are you talking about, Seth? What’s wrong?’

‘It’s the sleepers, mistress… it’s their dreams… I can’t…’

Brielle weighed the situation in her head. Her astropath appeared to be losing his grip on reality, but she needed him here, to communicate with her vessel in orbit, and for the edge his prodigious powers could provide in a dangerous situation. Yet, it appeared now that those same powers were proving his undoing, for it seemed to Brielle that the echoes of the dreams of the long-dead builders of this vast tomb were somehow afflicting him. If it came to it, she knew she could order one of the armsmen to incapacitate the astropath, to bind and drug him until the expedition was completed, but in so doing she would handicap their efforts significantly. She could not afford to lose the astropath, not yet, at least.

‘My lady?’ Brielle heard Quin address her over the vox channel. She turned, to see that the feral-worlder had made it safely across the chasm. ‘My lady, I will have one of the armsmen attend to the adept, have no fear. Now please, it is safe for you to cross.’

‘Thank you, Santos,’ Brielle answered, noting that one of the armsmen had moved closer to the astropath, evidently responding to a surreptitious order from Quin. She approached the lip of the chasm, and stood at its very edge for a moment, gazing past her feet into the lambent depths far below. She experienced again a wave of disorientation, having little to do with any fear of heights and more to do with the subtly wrong geometry of the tomb. She could not quite place it. It appeared sometimes that no two planes intersected exactly how they should, as if perspective were somehow out of kilter. Taking a deep breath, she pushed such concerns to the back of her mind and withdrew a cord from her belt. She seated herself at the edge of the chasm, and clipped the cord to the grapnel line.

In a single motion, Brielle swung out beneath the line, suspending herself below it. She tested the cord attaching her belt to the line, and, satisfied that it was properly attached, began to winch herself across. Above her, Brielle could see little more than darkness, the vaults far overhead twinkling with what she took to be stray reflections from the actinic energies raging below her. Pulling herself along, one hand over the other, she concentrated not on the hundreds, perhaps thousands of metres below her, but on those minuscule points of green light twinkling in the darkness overhead. She judged herself halfway across the mighty gap before she noted that the lights above appeared to be growing in brightness.

‘…dreams… the guttering flame… stirring…’ Brielle heard Adept Seth over the vox-channel, and craned her neck to look towards Quin. Doing so, she saw that the feral-worlder’s gaze was turned upwards, transfixed upon those same green lights that had held her own attention as she had crossed the gap.

She looked back upwards, to see that those same lights were now twice as bright, and were swooping down towards her!

‘My lady!’ Quin shouted. ‘Beware!’ The warrior raised his boltgun in both hands, bracing its butt against his shoulder. The weapon’s staccato bark was deafening, and its discharge illuminated the darkness with blinding orange fire.

Hanging precariously halfway across the depthless chasm, Brielle felt suddenly painfully aware of how exposed her position was. She had no time to seek out the targets Quin was firing at, or to engage them herself. Instead, she gritted her teeth and hauled on the line, dragging her body into motion, hand over hand.

Even as she concentrated upon crossing the chasm, the air all around Brielle was filled with flashing light, the discharge of the armsmen’s heavy-gauge shotguns as they blasted at the foe Brielle could not see.

‘My lady!’ Brielle heard, surprised by how close Quin’s voice sounded. She looked around, to see that, somehow, she had traversed the chasm, and Quin was reaching out a hand to help her climb up over the lip. She looked to his outstretched glove, before something behind him caught her eye.

‘Quin!’

The warrior followed his mistress’s gaze, turning on the spot and bringing his boltgun up, one-handed.

The weapon barked, its report shockingly loud at such close quarters, even through Brielle’s survival suit helmet. Something exploded, peppering Brielle and Quin with small metallic shards. With relief, Brielle saw that her suit was intact, its armour having protected her from the potentially lethal shrapnel.

‘Are you hurt?’ Brielle asked the warrior, aware that he had been closer to the detonation than she.

‘Not badly, my lady,’ Quin replied, before shouting a warning to one of the armsmen across the chasm.

Brielle looked across the gap, towards the remainder of the party. She was greeted by the sight of the armsmen arrayed in a semicircle, their backs to the edge of the chasm, with Joachim Hep and Adept Seth at the centre of their formation. While the fighters blasted into the darkness above, Hep was attempting to get Seth to cross the chasm.

From the darkness above the group flashed silvered, insect-like attackers, each little more than a metre in length. From what Brielle took to be the head of each creature, there shone a green light, clearly akin to that which blazed so brightly in the depths of the chasm she had just crossed. One of the metallic creatures swooped down upon an armsman, the green at its front increasing in brightness until the attacker was surrounded by a nimbus of pulsating energy. The armsman racked the slide on his shotgun and unleashed a blast at near point-blank range, but the creature swerved aside as it dived towards its target.

As the attacker fell upon the armsman, the green field surrounding it increased in intensity still further. At the last, his attacker closing, the armsman rotated his shotgun and drove its solid stock upwards, ramming it hard into his attacker’s head. The green light exploded as the shotgun crunched into the attacker’s fore section. The armsman was driven backwards, falling to land at the very edge of the chasm. His attacker plummeted, out of control, right above his supine form, and was lost in the pulsating depths far below.

‘Everyone across, come on!’ Brielle yelled, reaching for the bolt pistol holstered at her hip. Bracing the weapon in both hands, she drew a bead on the nearest of the insectoid attackers as it circled overhead.

‘Hep!’ she called. ‘Get Seth over here, now!’

Not waiting for an acknowledgement, she squeezed the trigger. Brielle’s pistol barked, and the shot struck home, burying itself in the outer shell of the creature’s body. The impact caused the creature to swerve abruptly, but before it could correct its course, it exploded into a thousand metallic shards, the miniature explosive warhead of the bolt round having detonated itself with lethal effect after penetrating the target’s armour.

As Hep forced the astropath onto the grapnel line and helped him cross, Brielle and Quin kept up their fusillade, the bolt rounds accounting for another three of the creatures. Then suddenly, the attackers broke off as one, as if in answer to some unheard order.

‘Is anyone hurt?’ Brielle asked Quin.

‘Not seriously, my lady,’ the warrior answered. ‘I do not think these creatures were made for fighting.’

Brielle looked to Quin. ‘Explain.’

‘My lady, these creatures appeared to me to be testing our defences and our capabilities. I believe they were little more than sentinels.’

‘Sentinels?’ Brielle repeated. ‘Sentinels guarding what?’

‘This place, my lady,’ Quin answered. ‘They guard this tomb against intruders. Against desecration.’

‘Against thieves,’ Brielle finished, allowing herself a wry smile.

‘They are close now, mistress… can’t you hear them?’ Brielle heard Seth mumble from her side as the party made its way through a maze of narrow passageways. Despite herself, she was beginning to lose her patience with the astropath, but knew there was little she could do about it now.

‘What is it you hear?’ Brielle replied. ‘Please, Seth, speak plainly.’

‘I hear these…’ Brielle turned as she walked, and saw that Seth was trailing his outstretched hand along wall, his unfeeling, gloved fingers following the intricate engravings that covered its every surface.

‘What do you mean?’ Brielle asked, knowing that she was unlikely to receive a coherent answer, but preferring to keep the astropath from descending into total madness.

‘It is all connected, mistress… all of it. They barely dream at all, mistress, not like we do…’

Brielle shook her head and turned her gaze back to the path ahead. The passages through which the group moved were narrow and dark, the only illumination provided by a green light emanating from the endless streams of alien script running along the walls. She tried not to look too closely at the script. To her, the interconnected circles and lines formed nodes and links, described hierarchies and progressions, told of alien domination and processes in which the human race had no part.

She shook her head once more, this time to clear it of the odd notions that crept into her consciousness whenever she looked too closely at the patterns on the walls.

‘Seth,’ she said. ‘Do not lay hands upon the walls…’

‘We must leave,’ the astropath announced, halting in his tracks. ‘We must turn back, mistress, now.’

Brielle stopped and turned on the astropath, ready to admonish him or order him sedated. And then, she caught an echo, a sound from the direction in which the party had come.

‘It’s the chasm, my lady,’ Quin said as she looked to him for his assessment. ‘The sentinel creatures.’

‘It’s them!’ Seth shrieked, and turned as if to flee.

‘Restrain him,’ Brielle ordered. Quin motioned to a nearby armsman, who moved in behind the astropath and gripped both of his arms at the elbows.

‘Why would the sentinels be active once more?’ Brielle asked, not expecting any of her servants to answer. She shared a glance with Santos Quin as he raised his boltgun and made to continue along the passageway. She lingered a moment, listening intently to the last of the sounds from behind as they echoed and faded to silence. She imagined for a moment that the sentinels might be attacking once more, before rejecting the notion, and following after Quin.

Leaving the dark, sigil-lined passageway behind, Brielle stepped out into a vast, circular chamber. The space was dominated by hundreds of tiered galleries, each one stacked upon that below, the highest lost in darkness far above. Each tier was lined with alcoves, in each of which a dully gleaming, humanoid statue stood.

‘Joachim?’ Brielle asked, as her advisor stepped up beside her. ‘What do you think?’

Hep’s gaze took in the vastness of the chamber, scanning the galleries with an expert eye. ‘I have never before seen the like, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘But I can think of half a dozen cartels that would pay a fortune for just one.’

‘My thoughts exactly,’ Brielle replied with a broad grin that was quite inappropriate on the lips of the daughter of a bearer of a Warrant of Trade. She crossed to the nearest of the statues. She stood before the metallic form, seeing that it had evidently been crafted to resemble some form of skeletal warrior, its face an impassive, skull-like death mask. Across its broad, ribbed chest, it held what was unmistakably a weapon.

‘The Catacombs of Skard were attended by metal grave guards,’ Brielle mused aloud, recalling gleefully an expedition into the subterranean vaults of that doomed world two years earlier. ‘They bought the clan an entire world…’

‘They did, ma’am,’ Hep replied, standing beside his mistress. ‘But they were cast of solid rhodium. These appear…’

‘Mechanical?’ Brielle interjected. Her eyes followed the many cables and pipes that led from sockets in the alcoves to points on the statue’s body. Was one of those cables twitching? ‘These are not mere grave-goods. Some manner of xenos technology is at work here…’

‘They slumber…’ Brielle heard Adept Seth sob from behind. The astropath had been restrained by two of the armsmen, but he continued to mumble an incoherent stream of nonsense. ‘We must leave!’ Seth bellowed, his voice echoing for long moments in the galleries high above.

‘Sedate him, now!’ Brielle ordered the armsmen restraining the astropath. She would save the apologies for later, when the party was back on the ship and its hold was full with xenos-tech.

Then, a voice filled the chamber.

‘You would do well to heed his words.’

Instantly, Santos Quin was at his mistress’s side, his boltgun raised as he scanned for the source of the voice. With a single gesture, he motioned for the armsmen to form a protective ring, with Brielle, Seth and Hep at its centre.

Raising the visor on her helmet, Brielle called into the darkness, ‘Who addresses me?’ As she spoke, she turned slowly around, seeking any sign of the individual who had spoken.

‘I address you,’ the answer came back. The voice was strangely lyrical in tone, not human, but not wholly alien either. Brielle followed the sound to its source, and saw a tall figure step from a dark portal on the other side of the chamber.

‘We claim this place, by right of conquest,’ Brielle called out, advancing towards the chamber’s centre as she spoke, her servants aiming their weapons at the intruder. ‘Be gone, or face the consequences.’

‘Consequences?’ the reply came back, the figure stepping forwards from the shadowed archway. A suspicion began to form in Brielle’s mind. ‘Pitiful idiots,’ the speaker replied, scorn dripping from every word. ‘You truly have no conception of your folly. Even as the galaxy crumbles to ash all around you, you flounder in your own filth, dragging yourselves and all of creation down with you.’

‘Such arrogance I’ve only ever heard from the lips of the eldar,’ Brielle replied, now certain of the intruder’s species. She came to a halt near the centre of the chamber and placed her hands at her hips, surreptitiously loosening the catch on the holster of her bolt pistol and the scabbard of her chainblade.

The figure approached, and came to a halt opposite Brielle. Her intuition had been correct. Before Brielle stood a tall, lithe humanoid figure, dressed in a long cloak of shifting, chameleonic fabric. Across his back, the eldar carried a long rifle, confirmation, if Brielle needed it, of his caste.

‘Pathfinder?’ Brielle asked, seeking to wrong-foot the alien with her knowledge of his kind. As she spoke, she counted another three aliens waiting in the shadows not far behind.

‘Indeed,’ the eldar demurred, nodding his head a slight degree. ‘If you have knowledge of my kin, then you know the folly of disregarding my warning. Leave this place. Do as your seer begs you. He has the truth of it, while you are blinded by avarice.’

Anger welling in her breast, Brielle raised a pointed finger as she advanced on the eldar. Her armoured boot thudded into an object on the dusty ground before her. ‘I know that you speak in riddles. I know that you lie. I know that you can’t be trusted,’ she spat, jabbing her finger at the eldar. ‘I know that you’d slaughter a million humans if your witches foretold it would save a single one of you from breaking a nail!’

‘And what of it, child?’ the eldar replied bitterly, ignoring the jibe but understanding Brielle’s meaning all too well. ‘My people have beheld the birth and the death of gods, while yours have barely crawled from the mud that begat you. What use reason, what use wisdom, when you seek nothing more than your own destruction, and care not if the galaxy burns along with you?’

‘More lies,’ Brielle retorted. She glanced down at the object at her feet. Half-submerged in the dust of aeons, there laid an ornate stave, a faint green glow shining at its bladed tip. ‘More words to cover your own arrogant selfishness.’

‘I say again,’ the eldar said, his glance following Brielle’s to the stave on the ground before her. ‘Disturb nothing, and you may yet live. We all may yet–’

‘You dare threaten me?’ Brielle returned. ‘You dare order me to do anything?’ She reached down and lifted the stave. It was heavy, and cold. ‘I’ll disturb whatsoever I choose, xenos.’

‘No!’ the eldar shouted, his former arrogance wavering. The alien looked around, as if searching for something amongst the galleries, his slanted eyes wide with fear. He reached for the long rifle slung across his back.

Before Brielle could react, the air around her erupted as a dozen weapons discharged as one. The eldar staggered, his body hammered as round after round slammed into it. An instant later, the remaining aliens returned fire, their own weapons unleashing a hail of silent, yet deadly precision projectiles.

Bringing her right arm upwards in a sharp movement, Brielle unleashed the deadly payload of one of the miniaturised weapons she wore as ornate, yet lethal rings. A jet of chemical liquid arched forth, erupting into flame as it arrowed towards the nearest of the eldar’s companions. The target saw his peril and rolled aside, the now-blazing liquid fire splashing down nearby. For an instant, Brielle cursed her misfortune, for the ring bore only a single charge. Then, a single gobbet of the fiery liquid splashed out, catching the eldar’s flowing, chameleonic cloak. Before he even realised his peril, the eldar had been engulfed in the hungry fire.

With a cold outer ruthlessness that belied the disgust within, Brielle drew her bolt pistol, levelled it calmly at the living torch before her and put a bolt shell through the unfortunate’s skull, ending his suffering for good.

Even as the dull crump of the bolt-round detonating inside the eldar’s skull echoed away, a burst of alien fire scythed through the air around her. Brielle dived aside, the stave still in her hands. She hit the dusty ground and rolled, coming up into a ready stance, to see that the firefight was already over. The aliens who had fired upon her lay dead, or grievously wounded, while the one she had killed with her concealed flamer guttered. Several of her servants were writhing on the ground, suppressing screams of pain from wounds that appeared no more than pin pricks, but had, she knew, probably wreaked havoc upon internal organs.

‘The xenos!’ Hep called out. ‘He lives still, ma’am, beware!’

Brielle looked across to the centre of the chamber, seeing that the eldar lay in a rapidly expanding pool of his own blood. His head was raised upon his straining neck as he looked straight at her. Seeing that the dying alien presented little danger, Brielle stood, pulling herself up on the alien stave as she did so.

‘Listen to me, human,’ the eldar coughed, blood flecking his lips as he spoke. ‘If you leave this place now, you may still avert a disaster you cannot possibly comprehend.’

Reaching the place where the alien lay, Brielle looked down upon his broken form. The hiss of venting gases sounded from one of the galleries high above. She knelt at the eldar’s side, and leaned forwards to bear witness to his last words.

‘There are forces in this universe you know nothing of,’ the eldar whispered, his fading gaze sweeping the highest of the chamber’s galleries. ‘Minds that have slumbered for aeons turn their attentions upon us once more…’

A sharp, cackling laugh sounded from behind Brielle, and she was struck by the terrible realisation that Adept Seth’s ravings might have contained something of the truth.

‘What forces?’ Brielle said. ‘What minds?’ She turned her head sharply as she thought she caught sight of movement in one of the alcoves nearby.

‘My lady…’ Quin said.

‘Wait!’ Brielle answered, aware that the eldar’s life was fading before her very eyes, but knowing that she must bear witness to what he had to say to her. ‘Tell me,’ she demanded.

‘Your race will discover, in time,’ the eldar responded, coughing. He vomited blood across his chest. A loud hiss sounded from very nearby, causing Brielle to look to the nearest of the alcoves and the skeletal statue within. ‘But you…’ The alien smiled grimly through bloody lips, fixing his gaze upon Brielle as she turned back to him. ‘You shall find out all too soon…’

Before the eldar could complete his sentence, the dusty ground on which he lay appeared to subside beneath him. Brielle looked on in frozen horror as the eldar sank into the dust. The alien’s eyes widened in terror as realisation of his fate hit home. A moment later, an area of dust three metres across was sinking, and then, a wide, circular hole opened up. The eldar tumbled downwards, dust cascading after him, and was gone.

‘My lady!’ Quin shouted. Brielle stared down into the dark hole that had opened up directly before her, and then turned to face Quin. ‘What?’

The feral-worlder’s only answer was to look towards the nearest of the alcoves. Within it, a pair of green lights shone. Looking closer, Brielle saw that the eyes of the metallic statue had come alive. She looked upwards, turning as she did so to take in the row upon row of galleries lining the chamber all the way up into the darkness far above. Dimly glowing within every single one of the thousands of alcoves was a pair of lights.

Brielle brought up her bolt pistol, as a sub-sonic drone sounded from somewhere very far beneath the ground on which she stood. Before her, a lurid green glow appeared in the dark hole in the centre of the chamber. She took a step backwards as her servants appeared at her side, their weapons raised.

‘Ma’am I strongly suggest we–’ Hep started.

‘I know,’ Brielle interrupted. Anger filled her, along with cold dread. In an instant, her dreams of the riches this place might yield evaporated, to be replaced by the raw instinct to simply survive. She realised with a start that the stave she still held in one hand was now glowing fiercely at its bladed tip, its haft feeling suddenly cold even through the glove of her survival suit.

And then, a column of blinding green light appeared, lancing upwards from the hole before her. Motes of drifting dust glittered as if trapped by the shaft, and the low rumble rose in volume, the ground now visibly trembling.

‘Fall back!’ Brielle called.

A scream cut the air, almost deafening even over the steadily increasingly sound emanating from the trembling ground. Brielle turned, to see Adept Seth bent double, both hands clamped across his helmet as if the astropath tried in vain to cover his ears. At the sound of the roar of Quin’s boltgun, she turned back towards the column of green light.

Within the shaft, a figure was rising. At first, all Brielle could make out was a humanoid form wreathed in a pulsating nimbus of light. As the figure rose upwards, she saw that it was floating, as if held aloft by the light itself. It was huge, easily three metres tall, its body a metal skeleton swathed in rags that appeared to writhe as if stirred by some unseen current.

‘We leave,’ Brielle ordered as the figure rose to a height of ten metres above the hole. ‘Now!’

Before her servants could react, the figure’s eyes came suddenly alive, aglow with the same green light that illuminated those of the statues, yet a hundred times brighter. Its death-mask head turned, as if it awakened, and regarded the sight before it.

That terrible gaze settled first upon the cowering form of Adept Seth. The astropath shrieked once more, and vomited inside his helmet, his face obscured by the dripping fluids. The skeletal figure’s eyes blazed still brighter, and a wet crump sounded from within the astropath’s helmet, the inside of the visor turning in an instant to the vivid red of fresh blood flecked with the grey of brain matter. Brielle watched in mute horror as Seth’s body toppled lifelessly to the ground, a great cloud of dust billowing up from the ground around it.

Casting off the unadulterated shock, Brielle levelled her bolt pistol and drew a shaky bead on the figure’s head. Breathing a silent prayer to the Emperor to guide her hand, she squeezed the trigger. Her shot struck the figure square across its metal brow, but the bolt exploded, leaving little more than a black smear to mark where it had landed. The creature appeared not even to register her attack.

A moment later, Quin bellowed a savage curse born of the barbaric world of his birth. The warrior raised his boltgun and in scant seconds emptied an entire magazine at his foe. Several dozen bolt-rounds, each sufficient to reduce a normal body to a bloody ruin, glanced harmlessly from the metal form above.

‘Quin!’ Brielle bellowed over the deafening roar of the armsmen’s shotguns joining in the fusillade. ‘It’s no use! We’re leaving!’

But the feral-worlder appeared not to hear his mistress’s words, or was perhaps held in the grip of some barbaric death-frenzy. Brielle reached for his shoulder, but he shrugged her off as he reloaded his boltgun. ‘Go!’ Quin shouted.

Brielle made to repeat her order, but the savage fury in Quin’s eyes told her that she would be wasting her breath.

‘I made a pledge,’ the warrior said, his eyes alight in his tattooed face. ‘I promised your father… Please, my lady, allow me to keep my word.’

Looking around her, Brielle saw the metal statues in the ground-floor alcoves had come to life and were even now advancing towards the centre of the chamber. She saw too that Quin hoped to buy her time to escape, with his very life. For an instant she considered ordering him to leave, begging him to leave, but she knew that neither course would work. Unable to speak, she nodded silent thanks to the warrior, hefting her bolt pistol in one hand and the glowing stave in the other. A small part of her mind prayed the warrior’s sacrifice was worth it, and his death would be a noble one.

‘With me!’ Brielle called out as she retreated towards the passageway. Joachim Hep appeared at her side, a laspistol raised before him, followed a moment later by a dozen armsmen. At the sound of Quin’s boltgun opening up once more, she turned to run for the passageway.

A metallic warrior barred her path. Instinctively, she brought her bolt pistol to bear, opening fire from a distance of scant metres. At the same moment, her companions did likewise, and the foe was rocked backwards as its skeletal body was hammered by round after round of precision fire.

For a moment, Brielle feared that this enemy’s metal form would prove as impervious to attack as that of the larger figure that floated above in the shaft of green light. She gave heartfelt thanks as she saw angry sparks erupt from within its chest, followed an instant later by a small explosion.

‘Again!’ She ordered, firing three more bolt-rounds into the enemy’s chest. The armsmen pumped shell after shell at the foe, forcing it backwards still further.

And then, the metal skeleton blew apart, ripped asunder by an explosion deep within its armoured ribcage. Jagged metal shrapnel lanced outwards, one piece shattering the armoured visor of Brielle’s helmet, and slashing a deep cut across her forehead.

Even as blood from her wound ran freely into Brielle’s eyes, she rushed onwards, almost gaining the passageway before turning to take one last look at the scene.

Quin had stopped firing once more, evidently having emptied another two-dozen bolt rounds into the floating figure. Even as he ejected the spent, sickle-shaped magazine, the figure turned its gaze upon him, as if noticing his presence for the first time.

Quin slammed home a fresh magazine and looked up into the blazing eyes of his enemy. The figure reached out a metallic skeletal arm, ragged swathes of cloth flapping as if in some aetheric breeze around it. As Quin raised his boltgun once more, his tattooed face a mask of savagery, the figure’s palm blazed with pulsating green light.

The feral-worlder convulsed, his boltgun slamming to the ground at his feet. Brielle screamed his name, but it was too late. Before her eyes, Quin’s survival suit appeared to melt away. First the armoured plates dissolved, as if the metal were being peeled away, one layer of atoms at a time. Then the fabric too disappeared, to reveal the warrior’s tattooed flesh beneath. For a moment, Quin stood naked before the metal daemon above him, and then the tattoos that covered his body faded, followed an instant later by his skin.

Quin’s bloodcurdling death-scream split the dusty air of the tomb chamber as his skin dissolved and the raw musculature beneath was revealed. Layer by layer, the flesh was peeled away, atomised to nothing by the awful power of the green radiation. At the last, only Quin’s skeleton stood, silhouetted against the blazing shaft of green light, and in an instant, that too was gone, the last of his marrow reduced to dust evaporating on the unnatural wind.

Before Brielle could react, the floating horror came fully to life, stepping from the column of green light before descending to the dusty ground with an earth-shaking impact. With a single motion, several thousand of its skeletal minions took a pace forwards, those on the ground level forming a circle around Brielle and her companions. Resigned now to the inevitable, but unwilling to go meekly, Brielle took a deep breath and raised her bolt pistol for one final act of defiance.

Before she knew it, the metal horror had strode across the chamber, and stood, towering over Brielle. Even as her finger tightened on the bolt pistol’s trigger, it regarded her through blazing green eyes. It extended its hand. Brielle steeled herself for the same fate that had befallen Quin, her skin burning with dreadful anticipation of such a grisly end.

But instead of that metal hand erupting in green, pulsating light, it appeared to make a gesture. The breath stuck in her throat, and Brielle relaxed her finger, for but an instant. Her mind raced as she sought to decipher the figure’s gesture.

Then it came to her. The metal daemon was demanding she surrender the stave she still held in her left hand.

‘You want this?’ She growled, girding her muscles and bracing her feet on the ground.

‘Then have it!’ With titanic effort, Brielle hurled the stave at her foe. The blade flared green as it crossed the space between them, almost blinding her. With unerring accuracy, the tip struck the skeletal figure in the centre of its ribcage, piercing armour that had proven impenetrable to dozens of boltgun rounds. A shaft of green light shot outwards, accompanied by a piercing machine howl, and the stave continued its course, burying itself up to the haft in the figure’s chest.

The skeletal horror stood transfixed by its own weapon, blinding green light now splaying in all directions from its wound. It stood, unable to move, its hellish death-mask face staring at Brielle as it writhed as if in agony. For an instant, Brielle felt some unutterable hatred of truly cosmic scale turned upon her, and knew total, soul-rending insignificance before that impossibly ancient malice. And then, the moment passed, and she tore her eyes away from the dazzling sight before her.

Seeing that the skeletal warriors around the chamber appeared to have faltered in their advance, as if they shared something of the pain Brielle had inflicted upon their lord, she saw the chance to escape, and grasped it for all she was worth.

‘Hep!’ she shouted above the infernal metallic howl emanating from the transfixed metal giant. ‘Gather the men. I’ve had just about enough of this place!’

Brielle stood upon the bridge of the Fairlight, Joachim Hep at her side. The wound at her brow was dressed, while Hep’s right arm was set in a sling.

‘A close call, ma’am,’ Hep said flatly.

Raising an eyebrow at the understatement, Brielle turned to face her advisor. ‘Aye, Joachim,’ she replied. ‘And costly. Santos will be missed. But,’ she continued, ‘it may not have been in vain.’

Hep rounded upon his mistress, unease writ large across his craggy features. ‘Ma’am…’ he started.

‘Easy, Joachim.’ Brielle smiled as she raised a hand to forestall her advisor’s inevitable objection to what she was about to say. ‘If what the pathfinder said is true, there must be more of these places, these tombs, out there,’ she nodded towards the void through the viewing port. ‘Just think, Joachim. Just think. We gained entrance to that tomb, and we had no idea what waited for us.’

‘Ma’am…’

‘That place makes Skard look like a downhive scav-mart,’ she grinned. ‘Just think what the Mechanicus would give to get their hands on that tech. They’d give anything to study just one of those machine warriors… what if we could broker contracts with each of the forges, one sample to each, exclusive rights…’

‘Brielle!’ Hep interjected. ‘Your father would march me from the torpedo tubes if I allowed you to…’

‘Next time,’ Brielle pressed on, a mischievous light entering her eyes, ‘we’ll know what awaits us.’ Feeling suddenly breathless at the thought of the riches she might bring to her house, she pressed on. ‘Next time, Joachim, no conceited eldar will interfere with our efforts. Next time, we’ll take it all…’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andy Hoare worked for eight years in Games Workshop's design studio, producing and developing new game rules and background material. Now working freelance writing novels, roleplaying game material and gaming-related magazine articles, Andy lives in Nottingham with his partner Sarah.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2010 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Clint Langley

© Games Workshop Limited, 2010, 2011. All rights reserved.

Black Library, the Black Library logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2011, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.

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ISBN 978-0-85787-359-0

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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.