HELLBREAK
Ben Counter

'You WILL NEVER know, scum.' the mechanically translated voice hissed in Commissar von Klas's ear, 'just how lucky you are!'
An unseen hand thrust him up the last few stairs, out of the darkness and into the searing glare of the arena. He stumbled in the sudden light and slipped, hitting the coarse sand face-first, scouring a layer of skin off his cheek. From all around him there rose a cackling cheer. He looked up and a terror shot through him that his training couldn't banish.
An area the size of a landing field spread out before him, its sandy floor streaked with crescents of maroon that could only be the bloody traces of those who had come before him. Around the edge of the arena was a ring of spikes as tall as a man, with a head impaled on each tip. There were heads of men and orks, the long slender faces of eldar, the twisted alien features of a hundred different species.
Beyond them, the amphitheatre rose, huge and dark, forged of black iron into forms which seemed to have been pulled, fully formed, from a madman's imagination. Wicked spikes and curving galleries formed the mouths of leering faces; immense claws of iron held up the private boxes of the elite. The whole edifice rose to join the myriad black pinnacles and spires of Commorragh which speared upwards, a mockery of beauty, to puncture a sky the colour of a wound gone bad.
That was not the worst of it. As von Klas hauled himself to his feet, feeling his muscles complaining with the sudden release from the steel bonds which had held them for so long, he felt their eyes upon him, and he heard their laughter. The audience of eldar renegades, many hundreds of thousands strong, sat in great serried ranks, their pale alien faces shining

like lanterns against the purples and blacks of their clothing. Silver blades gleamed everywhere, and he could hear them talking to one another in low voices - perhaps wagering on whether he would live or die, or just mocking a man who didn't know he was dead yet. In the prime position, right at the edge of the arena, sat a great dignitary, wim a face that even from this distance yon Klas could tell was as long and cruel as any he had ever seen. His purple robe only half-concealed ceremonial armour with great crescent-shaped shoulder guards. The dignitary was surrounded by a bodyguard who stood stone-still and carried spears tipped wim bright silver blades, and any number of hangers-on and courtiers lounged nearby.
Von Klas had barely time to take all this in when the dignitary raised one slender hand to the crowd, who screamed their approval with a deafening rising screech. Von Klas looked around him to see what had just been signalled - but he was alone in the vast arena. The doorway through which he had been pitched had sunk back into the sand behind him.
Something flickered in the corner of his eye. In the time it took him to turn and face it, it had got much closer. As a storm of thoughts and fears rushed through his commissar's mind, his old, trained instincts took over and he tensed his aching muscles for the fight
THE HUMAN HAD maybe a second and a half to see the wych as she back-flipped and cartwheeled her way across the sand towards him. She wore armour only to display her body, which was lithe and supple to an extent which no human could match. Her long red-black hair flowed out in a stormy trail behind her as she moved, along with the glistening metallic net that she held in one hand. In the other, twirling like a rotor blade, was a halberd, as long as she was tall and tipped with a broad, wickedly curved blade.
In his luxuriously fitted box at the front of the audience, the eldar who had signalled, Archon Kypselon, leaned across to Yae, who reclined next to him, her long, slim body draped over the seat, showing off her snakelike muscles. The leader of the Cult of Rage, Kypselon's most valuable ally, Yae looked every bit as formidable as her reputation, her dark hair braided with lengths of silver chain and her glassy, emerald eyes enough to intimidate any lesser eldar into submission.
'I hear this is one of the finest of your wyches.' he said off-handedly. 'Rather wasted on a single creature.'
'Perhaps, my archon.' she replied. 'But I hear it is one of their ruling class. It might provide some sport. They can breed them remarkably tough.'
Out in the arena, the human turned, holding its body low and hands high preparing for the wych's first strike. Through the blur of violent motion it would just be able to make out her face, twisted with exertion and hate, her eyes burning with the sacred narcotics which coursed joyfully

through her veins. The delicately pointed eldar ears and large eyes would do nothing to offset the base savagery.
'I hope she is as fine as they say.' Kypselon continued. 'The Kabal of the Broken Spine needs fine warriors. There are others who would take away the authority that I have earned.'
'You know the Cult of Rage is with you.' Yae smiled. 'Power and wisdom such as yours is enough to secure our loyalty.'
Kypselon smirked indulgently. He had been around long enough to know such words were nothing more than a cipher on Commorragh -he had seen enough eldar die by treachery, his included, to know that. But Yae's wyches were truly vital to him. Uergax and the Kabal of the Blade's Edge were threatening to shatter the delicate savagery of his territory. But those were matters for his court. He tried to concentrate on the entertainment at hand; it had, after all, been put on specifically for him. Such honour was really born of fear, of course, but on Commorragh fear and honour were much the same thing.
The wych let out a piercing shriek of pleasure and rage as she whipped the halberd back over her shoulder, leaping high into the air and preparing to bring the blade down on the human in a shining arc.
Yae gave a sudden, sharp gasp of excitement, like a child, sitting up with a glint of rapture in her eyes. Kypselon smiled - an old eldar like him could still appreciate the simple pleasures. A dead human was a pleasure indeed.
The man drove one foot into the arena's sand and thrust himself sideways, away from the shimmering blur of the wych's limbs, just as her blade scythed down in a silver-white blur past his face. Anyone else would have lost their balance and pitched into the bloodsoaked sand, but the wych somersaulted elegantly, landing on her feet and turning on a heel to face her quarry. But the human was ready too, and quicker than most men could, it drove the palm of one hand into the wych's face, snapping her head back, splitting her nose open in a vermilion spray.
There was a dark, displeased hiss from the galleries. Kypselon heard low obscenities muttered around him. Yae stood up, her eyes still shining with glee - for a true wych loves combat whoever wins. But the rest of the audience were not so happy.
The wych in the arena rolled onto her front in a heartbeat, ready to rise and face the upstart human, but he stamped a booted foot into the small of her back, pinning her to the ground.
'Kill it!' yelled an incensed spectator. 'Kill the animal!'
A hundred other voices joined in, rising to a roar - that became a cheer as the wych caught one of the man's legs with her own and tipped him sprawling on his back. She sprang up for the kill, her net forgotten, ready to swipe off his head with her halberd.

The audience noticed before she did: she was no longer holding the weapon. Her opponent was. Before she had time to respond, he drove the blade towards her. She held up the net in front of her neck and face, knowing its metallic strands would parry the blow and keep her head on her shoulders.
But the human was not aiming for her neck, for it did not care for the elegant decapitation that was the most graceful of murders. Instead, the blade went right through her stomach and out between the wych's shoulders. As her lifeblood gouted upwards, she looked unutterably surprised, still coming to realise that her weapon had been stolen.
The man drew out the blade and pulled himself to his feet. The wych slumped to the ground, amidst a growing crimson stain upon the sand.
The yells from the audience became a wordless howl of rage that rang violently around the amphitheatre. Yae was still on her feet, breathing in sharp, shallow gasps, her eyes wide.
Kypselon rose to stand at her side.
'Never fear.' he whispered to her under the din, This is as grave an insult to me as it is to you. I shall have the human given to the haemonculi. Then I shall deliver the skin to you once I am sure it can take no more pain.'
Yae did not answer. Her eyes burned and a snarl grew on her face. With a silent gesture, Kypselon ordered his black-armoured bodyguards to fetch the man and remove the body of the wych.
Seeing the dark eldar approaching, the man dropped the wych's halberd, perhaps expecting a quick despatch as a reward for his victory. The crowd continue to howl its derision as one of the warriors knocked him unconscious with the butt of his spear, and the body was dragged away to a fate that it could never have imagined.
It was always the same with aliens, Kypselon reflected. They are simply too stupid to realise when they would be better off dead.
THE ROOM WAS mercilessly lit by a bright glowing ceiling. Two of the alien warriors stood guard at the back wall. The floor was of bare metal, sloping towards a drain in the centre through which his bodily fluids were supposed to drain away. The walls were hung with skins, complete human pelts, presumably the finest of those taken by the torturer over the years. Tattoos had been favoured, and von Klas could recognise the regimental insignia and devotional verses inscribed on the skins: Catachan, Stratix, Jurn, even his own Hydraphur. The words of the Ecclesiarchy in intricate script. Primitive tribal scars. Even a green-brown ork hide with kill tallies gouged into the chest.
He looked down at himself. He was not bound. Presumably they thought the fear alone would keep him here. They were probably right.
'I won't die.' von Klas said aloud, every word like a hammer blow to his aching head. Tm a difficult man to kill.'

The warriors said nothing. The door between them opened with a hiss, and the torturer shuffled in. Von Klas had heard rumours about the torture artists of the renegade eldar, but it was only now that he started to believe them.
The eldar looked at von Klas with eyes which had long since sunken out of sight, the sockets just deep, ravaged tunnels. His skin was a dead blue-grey, stretched and striated by age and untold torment, the lips drawn back like a corpse's, the nose crashed and misshapen, the scalp hairless and paper-thin so white bone showed through.
The robes that covered his shuffling frame were fashioned from skins too, and he had picked out the best designs for them: rare metallic tattoos, the elaborate medical scars of an Astartes veteran. From a belt of gnarled hide, perhaps from an ogryn, hung a multitude of implements, scalpels and syringes, strange arcane devices for lifting the skin or teasing out nerve endings like splinters from a finger. There was something else, too, an articulated silver gauntlet with a medical blade tipping each digit, so sharp that their edges caught the acidic light and scraped incandescent curves in the air.
Behind him was a slave, a young human female, dressed in rags with long, lank, once-blonde hair, who scampered along behind the torturer like a fearful pet. She bore few obvious scars, the torturer needing her alive and lucid, since she acted as his interpreter.
The torturer hissed some words in his own language, a tongue as dry as snakeskin slithering between the exposed teeth.
Verredaek, haemonculus to Lord Archon Kypselon of the Broken Spine Kabal.' began the translator in hesitant Imperial Gothic, 'wishes his... his subject to know that he does not rely on mindless devices to perform his art. Some haemonculi employ cowardly machines which produce mediocre results in the art. Verredaek will only use the ancient talents passed on by the torturers of the Broken Spine. He is proud of this.'
Von Klas stood up, still aching. He was tall, as tall as the guards and far taller than the shrivelled haemonculus. 'I am not going to die here. I am going to kill every single one of you myself.' He kept his voice level, as if he was instructing his own men. 'I might not see it, and I might not even be there. But I will kill you.'
The terrified girl stammered his words back in the eldar language. Through her, Verredaek replied, 'It is good that you do not give up. The bodies and souls of creatures who do not believe themselves to be on the edge of death have long... fascinated me. The first cut will be sweet indeed.'
Without any discernible motion, a blade as long as an index finger, so sharp it disappeared when turned edge-on, appeared in Verredaek's hand. The torturer stepped forward, the skins of his robes hissing as they rubbed together. 'You will know fear, but know also that it is not in vain you die.

The art of pain continues through souls such as yours, their agony distilled and passed on, and one day you shall become part of a much greater work.'
Von Klas looked from the knife to Verredaek's sightless eye-sockets, and saw his mistake. This was how he managed to torture his victims without strapping them down or tying them up. Those desperately empty caverns, the ridges of desiccated skin picked out by the harsh light, seemed to bolt him to the ground and drain his limbs of strength.
His superiors had decided that von Klas was officer material, but he had never been a greatly distinguished officer, never led charges that shattered armies, never held the line against awesome odds. He had the medals they give commissars as a matter of course, and nothing more. He might have been in effective command of twenty thousand men, but in the Imperium that made him one amongst a million.
But he had survived the battle in the arena. He had proved to be something special to his captors, so much so that he had been given to Verredaek as a punishment. And now he would be something again. He would survive this, too. He didn't care if it was unknown. He would still do it.
For a second, Verredaek's hypnotic aura was broken as von Klas made his vow to survive. He closed his eyes, and his body was his own again. He would not get a second chance.
With all his strength, he punched, low and hard. His hand hit spongy flesh and drove deeper. The haemonculus gasped in astonishment. The commissar grabbed Verredaek so he would not fall, and spun both of them around, just as the eldar guards began to shoot. One shot sprayed Verredaek across the back, his skin splitting and bursting like a rotten fruit under the assault of a hundred splinters of crystal. The second caught von Klas on the shoulder, a glancing blow but one that drove a dozen splinters deep into the muscle.
The translator screamed and scampered across to the far side of the room, wrapping her arms around her head so she couldn't see.
Von Klas drove Verredaek's body forward into one guard, smashing the eldar into the back wall, knocking him senseless. The second eldar hesitated. It was enough. Von Klas scrabbled at Verredaek's belt until he felt the cold steel of his gauntlet. He thrust his hand into it, feeling the woven metal mesh close around his hand. With one motion he snapped it off the tendon that bound it to the belt and thrust it deep into the second guard's chest. The eldar let out a muffled cry, then slumped lifelessly to the floor.
Von Klas stood up once more, Verredaek's limp body sliding off his shoulders and down the wall. The first eldar lay motionless against the back wall where he had been rammed. He might have been dead, but behind the lifeless jade of the alien's helmet's eyes von Klas couldn't be

sure. The second was certainly dead, though, his blood running down into the drain at the room's centre.
Verredaek shifted slightly and suddenly there was an alien gun pointing at von Klas, slender and strange, held in a gnarled blue-grey hand. Without thinking, von Klas slashed the torturer's gauntlet downwards as the eldar turned his head to aim. The blades swiped cleanly through his face, slicing the withered skin to ribbons. The haemonculus slumped to the floor at last.
He had been difficult to kill. But then so am I, thought Commissar von Klas.
He considered taking one of the guard's rifles, but he would have needed two hands to fire it and he wanted to keep hold of the razor-gauntlet. And the splinters mat had hit him, though they were sending occasional flashes of pain mrough his muscles, had still left him alive. Not very efficient, he thought coldly. The torturer's gun might prove more useful. He prised it from Verredaek's dead hands. It was oddly light, and very strange to look at, with a barrel so slender only a needle, surely, could be fired out.
He turned to the translator slave still cowering in the corner behind one of the hanging skins.
'You coming?' he asked. 'We can escape from here if we hurry.'
The translator didn't seem to understand him, as if she wasn't used to having Imperial spoken directly to her and wasn't sure how to respond. She shook her head and redoubled her efforts to hide from him. Von Klas decided to leave her.
The door through which Verredaek had entered opened with a simple touch of his hand on a panel set into the wall. Beyond it, the corridors were made of the same polished metal, but bent and buckled into strange shapes, as if the whole place had been picked up and twisted by a giant. Von Klas jogged down the corridor, mind buzzing, trying to work out if the place had a pattern to it, one part of his brain keeping watch for signs of more guards.
He came to a row of cells, four of them, the doors again opening easily with a press of their inset panels. Behind the first was a human, an Imperial Guardsman, still dressed in his grime-grey uniform, his head shaved and his face aged beyond his years.
The man blinked in the sudden light, for the cells were pitch black inside, and looked up at what must have been von Klas's silhouette. 'You're one of us,' he said, surprised into stupidity.
'Come on. We're getting out,' von Klas replied.
The Guardsman smiled sadly and shook his head. They'll be here any moment. We won't stand a chance.'
That's an order, soldier. I'm a commissar and I've got scores to settle. If I say we're leaving then we're out of here already. Now move!'

The Guardsman shrugged and shuffled unsteadily out of the cell -prisoners weren't manacled, Verredaek must have thought he was above that. Von Klas hurried to open the other three cells.
'Sir! Trouble!' yelled the Guardsman. A sketchy reflection of the approaching eldar warriors shimmered on the metal wall and splinters began shattering against the walls.
As three other Guardsmen emerged, stumbling and confused, von Klas levelled Verredaek's pistol to defend them. He fired at the first hint of purple and silver that came round the corner, tiny darts leaving a glittering trail as they raced for their target.
There was a strangled cry and the first renegade eldar pitched forward, clutching at the shattered mask of his helmet. As his cries became garbled howls, the warrior convulsed, his body splitting and twisting as it was ripped apart. Hot blood and shards of bone spattered and ricocheted across the walls. The Guardsmen - two in sand-coloured uniforms, Tal-larn maybe; the last in the remains of a dark red uniform that could have been Adeptus Mechanicus - ducked back into the cells for cover. Von Klas might not have understood the eldar tongue but he knew fear when he heard it, and that was what he heard now, as the remaining eldar guards howled in fright or pain and fell back.
'Move!' von Klas said quickly. They're scared of us now!'
The first man he had released darted forwards and grabbed two rifles from where the guards had dropped them, throwing one to one of the Tallarn. After a moment to scrutinise the controls, they started pumping fire back down the corridor, before hurrying after the others.
Von Klas and his men - they were surely his men now, his unit - hurried away from the cells, von Klas leading, the two armed men jogging backwards with their rifles ready to offer covering fire. All the while von Klas could hear voices, the guards calling for help, trying to organise a pursuit, or perhaps just cursing the Guardsmen in their vile alien tongue.
The labyrinth of prison corridors rolled out in front of them in ever more tormented designs. As they stumbled along, von Klas was beginning to believe that surviving might be impossible after all, even for a commissar. But no more guards came. It was not the guards that were supposed to stop prisoners escaping - it was the torment and brutality that were meant to break their will. Von Klas and his men passed the threshold of scarred iron, and emerged, breathless, bloody and exhausted, hearts racing, into the open air, the bowels of Verredaek's torture machine behind them.
But von Klas knew with an officer's instinct that they were not safe. Because they had only freed themselves in order to enter the dark eldar world-city of Commorragh.
* * *

VERREDAEK LOOKED OLDER, thought Kypselon, older even than the shattered, wizened specimen that first came into the archon's employ. But, of course, it could just be the vile old creature's shredded face. It had been a long time since Kypselon had seen Verredaek - not since the haemoncu-lus had first retreated into his underground complex to pursue the art of torturer at his command, in fact.
Verredaek shuffled pathetically across the floor of Kypselon's throne room, across the milky marble shot though with amethyst veins. He looked small and feeble under the gaze of the three hundred or so eldar warriors who stood around the room's edge, weapons held ready, constantly at attention.
'Fallen One's teeth, what happened to him?' slurred Exuma, Kypselon's dracon, who was lounging in a seat held aloft by anti-grav motors so he didn't have to walk anywhere. A quietly gurgling medical array pumped a steady stream of narcotics into Exuma's blood.
'He failed.' Kypselon replied with feeling. When he rose from his black iron throne, the wide window behind him cast the shadow of his shoulder guards across Verredaek in two great crescents. The torturer seemed to shrink, and though his eyes were hidden, Kypselon could detect fear in the dark sockets.
Verredaek, you will recall that when you first entered my services, I had my servants take a little of your blood.' Kypselon's deep voice echoed faintly off the high, vaulted ceiling and purple-draped marble walls.
Yethhh, archon,' Verredaek replied, his speech impeded by his newly-forked tongue.
'I still have what I took. The reason I keep it, and that of all my followers, is to make real the notion that I own you. You are mine, you are a part of my territory, just like the streets and palaces. Just like my temple. The price of belonging to the Broken Spine is total subservience to me. Yet you failed to carry out my commands.'
Verredaek tried to speak, but he too had been alive longer than most on Commorragh, and he knew that words would not save him here.
'I ordered you to bring the human here, skinless and broken, so I could watch him die. This you failed to do. The reasons are irrelevant. You failed. By definition, being a possession of mine, you must be discarded.'
Kypselon shot a glance at the front row of warriors and four of them strode forwards, grabbing Verredaek and holding him fast.
The haemonculus didn't struggle as Yae flipped her lithe body from the shadows into the centre of the room. Her eyes and smile flashed, as she drew twin hydraknives. They turned to lightning bolts in her hands as she danced - and killed.
As Yae twirled and slashed a thousand cuts into Verredaek's body, Kypselon turned to his dracon. 'What is the situation with the Blade's Edge?'

Exuma looked back with glazed eyes. 'Little has changed, my archon. Uergax has the mandrakes, and the incubi favour him as well. Some remain loyal to us, but what Uergax lacks in territory he makes up for with most admirable diplomacy.' The dracon paused to gasp with pleasure as another bolt of drugs shot through his veins.
Kypselon shook his head. 'It is not good. Uergax may soon crush us as I would wish to crash him. The Blade's Edge covets our corner of Com-morragh and if incompetence like this persists he will get it. Yae!'
The wych span to a halt and let her lacerated handiwork collapse to the floor. 'Archon?'
The human we wished to see dead is more resourceful than we thought. It is now loose on Commorragh. Find it.'
Yae smiled with genuine relish. 'It is a great honour to perform a task that would give me such pleasure in the name of one so great.'
'No time for blandishments, Yae. Uergax is bleeding us dry and I do not need this creature running loose to complicate matters. I fully expect you to succeed.'
Yes, lord.'
'And be wary. This one has a colder heart than most. You may go.'
Yae flitted away, as only a wych could, to fulfil his commands. Kypselon turned to the great window behind him. It was a view of Commorragh, a riot of dark madness and broken spires, bridges that crossed to nothing, mutilated cathedrals to insanity and evil, a planet-wide city at once unfinished and ancient, swarming beneath a glorious swirling thunderstorm sky. And in the centre, obscene, bleached and pale, was Kypselon's temple. A temple to him, because living so long and rising to such power on Commorragh was such an impossible task it might as well be that of a god. A thousand pillars made of thigh bones held up a roof tiled with skulls. Whole skeletons acted out scenes of violation and murder on friezes and pediments.
'Every eldar, human, ork, every enemy I have ever killed stands there, Exuma. Every one. My temple is a testament to the fact that I will not give up, not ever. I have carved a path for myself through the very bodies of my foes.'
Exuma allowed himself to drift back into lucidity long enough to reply: Archon, none can say that you have failed in anything you have attempted.'
That is the past. I have risen to power and I will not relinquish it to a boy like Uergax. I am not ashamed of fear, Exuma, even though young upstarts like Uergax and yourself are. And I feel fear now. But I will use that fear, and my temple will grow.'
Outside, the cancerous rain of Commorragh began to fall.
* * *

'IN THE CITY, you need those who want your money or your honour. On the plains, in the desert, you need brothers.' Rahimzadeh of Tallarn was a wiry, intense man, not long a soldier but already well versed in the hot fear and desperation of war. 'Though there are only two of us left, we are brothers still.'
Ibn, the second Tallarn, looked up from the ornate eldar splinter rifle he was examining. You would not understand. On your Hydraphur, a million men live within sight of one another. No room for true brothers.'
Von Klas winced as Scleros, the lexmechanic, pulled another shard from the commissar's raw shoulder. It felt like the razor-sharp crystals were doing as much damage coming out as they did going in. 'Brothers or not, we still have a chain of command. I am a commissar and you are now my men.'
'Why?' Ibn asked with a sneer. 'What good can orders and rank do here?' He waved an arm to indicate their surroundings - a shattered shell of a building, the carcass of some vast cathedral of soaring flutes and arches, now gutted and decrepit. It was deserted, which was why they had stopped here, but they all knew that there were malevolent eyes everywhere on Commorragh and they could soon be found wherever they hid.
'We can get out of here.' the commissar replied. There's a spaceport nearby, close to the temple.'
Temple? This place has no gods.' Rahimzadeh said. 'Even the Emperor's light is faint upon us here.'
'It is consecrated to the foul leader of this part of the planet. The scum raised a temple to himself. The spaceport's nearby but it's garrisoned. We'd have to occupy the temple, draw in the garrison troops and make a break for the spaceport.'
'Death would claim us all before we reached it.' said Ibn.
'Not all of us. Not if there were enough. Would you rather let them recapture you? They wouldn't let you ran away twice. If we try to escape we'll either make it or die trying. Whatever happens then, it's better than skulking here until one of them finds us.'
Rahimzadeh thought for a second. What you say is true. I think you are a good man. But we need others.'
"We'll need a whole damn army.' Ibn said.
Von Klas turned around. 'Scleras?'
The commissar had been right - the tattered dark rust-red uniform was that of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Scleros was a lexmechanic, his brain adapted to allow him to absorb a huge amount of information, produce calculations and battlefield reports. His augmentation was belied by the intricate web of silver tracery surrounding his artificial right eye. You said there is a chain of command. As commanding officer, the decision is yours.'
'Fine. And you?'

The fourth Guardsman had said little. His head was shaven and he wore the grey uniform that could be from one of a thousand regiments. 'Sure. Whatever. As long as I get a shot at some of those freaks.'
Von Klas studied the Imperial Guardsman: his hollow eyes, his scowl, the nose that had been broken two or three times. 'What's your name, soldier?'
'Kep. Necromundan Seventh.'
Ibn let out a short, barking laugh. 'Lucky Sevens? The sands do not lie so much. You are penal legions, my friend. The tattoo at the top of your arm, they can read it. You have the scar on your wrist where the machine makes your blood mad.'
Kep shrugged and held up his hand. Von Klas could see the scar where a frenzon dispenser had once been implanted. 'Guilty. I am from the First Penal Legion.'
The First?' Rahimzadeh said with a hint of awe in his voice. The Big One?'
'What's your crime?' asked von Klas, his words straining as Scleros removed the last of the eldar shrapnel.
'Heresy. Third class. Standard practice - if eldar pirates show up you feed them the penal legion. They get their slaves, the Imperium ditches a few more scum, everyone's happy.'
The bruise-coloured clouds above had coagulated. Large, filthy grey raindrops started to fall, grey with pollutants. Kep and the Tallarn ran, hunched, into a corner of the old cathedral, where some of the roof remained and there was cover.
Von Klas looked round at Scleros, the remaining soldier. The lexme-chanic, as he expected, had no expression. You had the surgery?'
The thick rain sent strange trails across the circuitry on Scleros's face. 'Emotional repression protocol, sir. It allows me to deal with information of an ideologically sensitive nature.'
Thought so. Scleros, you realise that we're never going to get off this planet, don't you?'
'I was unable to understand how we could escape through a spaceport. We would not be able to use a spacecraft, even if we were able to understand eldar technology. We would be shot down. We can not escape this place.'
'I trust you not to tell the men. This mission's objective does not allow for our survival.'
Scleros held out a hand and let a little of the rain collect in his palm. It swam with grey trails of impurity. "We should get out of the rain. This could infect us.'
The two headed for shelter, while all around them, the soul of Com-morragh seethed for their blood.
* * *

SYBARITE LAEVEQ GAZED down from the gantry at the immense metallic beast, powered by the exertions of the many hundreds of deliriously emaciated human slaves that were chained to its pneumatic limbs. Great clouds of acrid smoke and steam from the huge cauldron of molten metal obscured their faces, and Laeveq felt as if he were striding in the clouds, a god looking down upon the wretches who both feared him and needed him to survive.
The eldar guard watched as another of them fell, limbs flopping loose as the clanking, screeching steel mill machinery carried on without it, head snapping back and forth as the machinery threw it about blindly. Soon Laeveq's eldar would go onto the factory floor and take away the battered corpse and replaced it with another faceless barbarian.
'Sybarite Laeveq.' a hasty voice came through his communicator. 'A problem has presented itself.'
'Elaborate, Xaron.'
'It's Kytellias. She didn't call in on her patrol so we went to find her. Her throat had been slit, ear to ear. Very pretty. Very clean.'
Laeveq cursed his fortune. 'Fugitives. Bring every armed eldar to me, on the gantry above the main hall. We will sweep this entire factory and disembowel them on top of the machinery so all these brute animals will see the cost of denial.'
'It may not be that simple, sybarite. Lady Yae has sent word of dangerous escaped arena slaves.'
Then we will take much reward for bringing them in. Send everyone here. Is that understood?'
There was no answer. A dim static crackled where the warrior's voice should have been.
'I said, "Is that understood?" Xaron?'
Nothing. Laeveq looked around him at the web of gantries spanning the great space of the main factory hall. Through the billowing sheets of steam, he could see nothing. He felt suddenly alone.
When Laeveq caught sight of the human figure running towards his position along the gantry, he was sure he could take him. It was a tall and strong man, to be sure, with hair cut close and a muscled torso riven with many old scars. It had found a scissorhand and a stinger pistol from somewhere, too, but it would not be skilled with them.
Laeveq whipped out his own splinter pistol and took pleasure in the aiming, fancying he could take the animal in the lower abdomen, and watch it squeal in bestial pain before taking its head.
Before he could pull the trigger, however, the human leapt into the air, swiping the glittering blades of the scissorhand through one of the chains that suspended the gantries from the high ceiling. It landed again, almost falling onto its face. Laeveq smiled, knowing that he could not miss such a fallen target.

The room soared upwards around him as the gantry fell vertical, the chain holding it sliced through. The last things Laeveq saw were the pale, frightened upturned faces of the slaves swirling towards him through the smoke, and the violent red heat of the cauldron, before the liquid fire enveloped him.
VON KLAS ARRIVED at Kep's side. The Guardsman was just watching as the molten metal finally covered the top of the eldar's head.
'Your heresy might be third-class.' the commissar said, 'but you're a first-rate murderer.'
'It's what kept me alive.' Kep looked over the gantry rail, and the factory floor below. Hundreds of frightened eyes gazed back. 'So what now?'
Von Klas got to his feet. 'We start our little war. Get Rahimzadeh and Ibn and start unchaining those slaves. And send Scleras up here, we'll need his logistics. We've got an army now.'
THE MOST INTOLERABLE thing of all, thought Kypselon, was that he could see it from his own throne room. The beautiful cold temple of bone, the icon of perfection which would place the seal of immortality on his long and brutal life, now stained by the presence of two thousand barbaric aliens.
'How long have they occupied it?' he asked, his voice quiet and low, as it always was when Kypselon was at his most wrathful, and thus his most dangerous.
Exuma's eyes unclouded slightly. 'Since the turning of the second sun.' he replied. 'They attacked the temple and slaughtered the garrison. Some of them will be armed by now, they had quite an armoury there. It's your human all right. It must have recruited the slaves when it took over Laeveq's factory a few hours ago. Remember Laeveq? Bright boy.'
Kypselon waved a hand brusquely and the great window dimmed into shadow. He turned, his dark purple robes sweeping out behind him, and strode into the centre of the throne room. The eyes of his elite warriors followed his every move. He raised his arms as he spoke, his voice deep and resonant with hate.
To your strike craft, my children!' he howled. This is an insult to you as it is to me. There will be no animals defiling my temple. There will be no barbarian aliens defying our natural dominion! Take up arms and we shall revel in the blood of slaves!'
The warriors held up their weapons and screamed. Their keening war cry drifted through the palace and out into Commorragh, echoing across the nightmarish spires, through the evil air.
FROM WITHIN, THE temple was a vast hollowed carcass, bleached white, monstrous vertebrae spanning the ceiling, an altar of skulls the size of a

command bunker towering above them all. The slaves crouched behind the barricades they had made from the shattered architectural debris of Commorragh, fragments of broken arches, bouquets of iron spikes. Those that were armed had their rifles and pistols pointed at the horizon - those that were not found themselves jagged shards of metal or heavy bars to fight with at closer quarters.
Rahimzadeh and Kep were in the front line, the slaves formed up around them. It occurred to von Klas that the wasted, broken slaves were the first command the Guardsmen had ever had. Near the altar, Ibn was organising those slaves who seemed the strongest, the ones who had been given the few heavy weapons they had found.
'How many do we have?' Commissar von Klas asked Scleras.
'Eighteen hundred. Of two thousand we attacked with.'
'Armed?'
'Seven hundred.' Scleras seemed unmoved by the information.
Von Klas looked between the pillars at the churning sky. He saw something, vague flitting black spots like flies. He had seen them before, untold millions of miles away, on an insignificant moon of Hydraphur. They were devastating eldar attack craft: Raiders.
'No ALIEN MUST live. Bring me the head of the man-scum who dared defy my will.' Kypselon gave his order in a stern, quiet voice, knowing it would be transmitted into the very consciousness of every eldar under his control.
His ornate strike craft touched down and all around him flowed a tide of his followers, a wave that crashed against the makeshift barricades and swept over them. The first were absorbed by the slaves, those that were armed keeping low against their barricades and pouring splinter fire into their foes. Warriors fell broken to the floor, a hundred at a stroke, but they could be replaced.
From within the depths of the front lines a horde of slaves armed with little save fear and anger poured out. They were led by a shaven-headed maniac with a splinter pistol in each hand, the fury in his eyes infecting the slaves formed up around him, who attacked with crude blades and clubs.
Yae's wyches went to meet them, dancing gleefully between the barbarians, lashing out with their silver blades, slicing through the pale skinny bodies of the slaves. But the slaves still would not fall back, still they charged forward, even as their leader died under Yae's twin blades. Countless slaves died, slashed to pieces or riddled with splinter rounds. Heavy fire from stolen dark lances and splinter cannons scythed through the eldar warriors, but then Yae broke through, and again the slaves' blood swirled ankle-deep on the temple floor.
Kypselon ordered his craft forward through the carnage. Before him lay only one target: the human filth who had started it all, he of the colder

heart, standing defiant by the great skull altar, still bearing the weapons he had stolen from Verredaek.
Alerting Verredaek's miserable translator slave with a cuff to the head, Kypselon landed within earshot of the human, where they could talk above the cries of the dead. The eldar bodyguard stood aside. Kypselon spoke.
'Who are you to defy my will?' he asked via the translator.
'I am Commissar von Klas, of Hydraphur.' replied the alien, almost as if he wasn't afraid. 'You may remember. When you took my command prisoner, you picked out a handful of us to kill at your leisure. Ten per cent.'
Kypselon thought for a second. He was old, he had killed so many...
Then he remembered.
'Of course.' he said with a smile of pride. "You're the one in ten.'
The human, von Klas, smiled coldly. 'No, the one in a million.'
Kypselon noticed the young one too late, the one in a dirty dark red uniform, with the web of metal across the side of his face, skulking at the foot of the altar. It pressed down a plunger on the control it was holding.
A dozen explosive charges stolen from the factory went off at once. They blasted the bases out from the pillars, sending great shards of bone shearing down from the ceiling. They crushed eldar and slave alike, and punched through the hulls of the eldar Raiders. Only Kypselon's craft managed to dodge out between the pillars.
Half the warriors were buried as a cloud of dust rose to obscure the imploding mass of bone which had once represented Kypselon's endless career of murder and savage glory. Broken skulls rained down from a sky the colour of dead flesh.
Kypselon felt that emotion he had not felt for a very long time. The feeling that he had lost control.
'Death to men!' he hissed to anyone who could hear. 'I want no slave sullying my city! Kill them all! Every one! This disgusting species shall never again face me and live!'
WHEN VON KLAS awoke he was manacled to the cold metal floor of a cell. The skin on his back was raw from the lash. He was unable to focus properly; the taste of blood was in his mouth. In the minimal light he could see that his legs had been broken, and were lying out in front of him like useless twigs. He was probably dying. But had he won? He drifted into unconsciousness again.
Days or weeks later, he could no longer tell, the cell door was opened and another two prisoners were thrown in. One was human, a girl, with straggly hair that had once been blonde, who crawled like a beaten dog.
The other was an eldar, thin and feeble without his armour and his legions of elite guards, his eyes dull, his wrinkling skin bruised. He stared

at von Klas and started with recognition. Then he spoke. The translator took up his dark sibilant language in Imperial Gothic automatically, working from an instinct that had been bored into her soul.
'I knew you had a cold heart, human.' Kypselon said, with something approaching admiration.
Von Klas laughed darkly, even though it hurt his raw throat. "What was it in the end? What finished you?'
Kypselon shook his head gravely. 'Uergax. We had no slaves, we had no factories, no expendable troops. We were crippled. He had the mandrakes, the incubi. He carved the Broken Spine apart as if he had been born to it.' The archon slumped to the cell floor, and von Klas saw the old eldar's fires of ambition were out.
Your Raiders turned up as blips on our scanners.' said the human who called himself a commissar. 'Seventy-two hours later, the only survivor of seventeen whole platoons was me, but Ihad my orders. I was to eliminate any threats and a commissar either fulfils his orders or dies. I fulfilled mine.'
He looked Kypselon deep in his unknowable alien eyes. 'We humans aren't as stupid as you eldar believe. Remember my words, when Uergax comes to execute us both. I know I'll get a blade through the neck, like any other animal.
'But I imagine that it will take far, far longer for you to die.'