Sea of Claws, close to Langeness Island
Svea had not believed she would sleep well after this strange Christmas evening, there was so much to think about. And while she had a small room to herself the rain was quite loud against her window next to her bed. There was also a piece of goose in her stomach, asking for lots of blood to digest it. The goose won and she had gone to sleep barely the moment her head hit the pillow.
She could not say what had woken her up and when she did she was disoriented for a moment. Something was missing and something else was there which had been missing before. Svea needed a moment to realize that it was the silence and the light of Mannslieb which shone through the window. The stars were out and the small yard that connected the various houses was bathed in a pale, slightly green light.
She was about to turn from the window when she saw something emerging from the garage. The building had been a stable before, or so she had been told. But why would someone be over there in the middle of the night? But someone was and she could not recognize who made his or her way across the yard. Only Svea's family and her were on the small island at present. Oh, there was Herr Wednesday, but he was less hunched-over, less massive and had not walked in such a strange way.
Like in a dream she could only watch, not move and watch she did. The more the figure came into Morrslieb's light he became ever more visible. It was hard to say where the fur of the coat stopped and beard and hair started. Even if there was a coat at all or if this was fur was not clear. What was without question was that there were two horns, disfigured and misshapen. The face was hard to see, but the eyes were just black tunnels while the teeth were too well defined. There were chains hanging across the beings back, a whip and canes were visible hanging from what might be a belt.
And then the being looked right at her.
Autobahn A7, close to Kirchheim
Until lawmen had shown up it had been an invigorating ride, just him and his bike with a good road under the wheels and a race against time he was going to win handily. Now it was a challenge, a battle of skill and luck. He had next to no intelligence of the humans of this world. Unless he had clear indication that they pledged allegiance to the fell gods he was unwilling to kill them. At the same time he certainly had no time explaining his travels to people who would hardly know his language. This looked like no Imperial world he would recognize and the radio frequencies were only filled with gibberish.
He had to be careful though. These people were far from Imperial levels of technology, but they were not primitive. The car that paced his was proof of that and a civilization that could build it could also build powerful weapons systems. He would gladly battle any being ever born or raised in a vat. But if the locals took the gloves off they might simply bomb him from altitude.
And before him they made their play. It was no ambush, not as such but they wanted him to see them, wanted him to slow and surrender. The bright strobing lights said as much, as did the illuminated panels he could not read. They tried to waylay him at a place where construction work reduced the width of the road considerably. He barely saw the belt of nails barely in time and far too late to break before it. His bike ran right over them and the tires ignored them as they would ignore anything else that would litter a battlefield. There was air in them, but tension and shape was provided by high-tech foam. He could hardly see whether the locals were phased by that, but their Plan B became quite visible a second later. A small truck was pushed perpendicularly to the road, blocking his way completely. He might barely break in time, he could not go around as the road had steel guardrails on both sides.
The Melta on Jaghatai's bike had been built to penetrate the armor on huge armored vehicles. It had no problem at all obliterating a few meters of the inner rail. It took all of the Khan's skills to keep the bike on track when he drove through the gap, he managed to keep things going. He passed the not-ambush at thundering speed and created another gap a kilometer downrange as not to face oncoming traffic.
Sea of Claws, close to Langeness Island
Svea simply knew that the monster out there was to get her, to take her away from her family and remake her in cruel ways. And there was nothing she could do about it, she could not move, could not scream, only watch.
The being made its way halfway across the yard before somebody stepped in his way.
He wore the same clothes, the face was still the same and still he was different. Herr Wednesday seemed bigger somehow, walked straighter and held a spear in his right hand. Herr Wednesday's voice was so easy to hear, as if he had spoken the words right next to her.
"Shouldn't there be a jolly guy about, ready to give gifts? Lost your master in the shuffle Ruprecht? Or has that part gone to this Shallya and has left you an orphan? Poor little thing, all alone in the dark, aren't you?"
There was a rumble and grunts that came from the being's throat, language it was not.
"Knecht Ruprecht, our time may both be over except for days like this one. We are both shadows of what we should be. And yet I tell you that you cannot have her."
There was more of the grunts.
"What she is to me? That should not matter to you, but I have this feeling that she might feast in my hall many years hence. So what it is going to be, do we go quietly into the night or do we dance?"
The spear had just been at Herr Wednesday's side, Svea had seen it there. How it came to be between the two she could not say, as she could not understand why but her heard the two.
The two beings looked at each other for a moment, then the monster faded away. Herr Wednesday turned around and watched her for a moment. He seemed to smile when she woke up.
She was at the window in a flash, but there was nothing outside, but for the empty yard. What a bloody dream, Herr Wednesday had gotten her good at the Christmas dinner.
Sea of Claws, close to Langeness Island
Jaghatai Khan knew he was watched, he just couldn't spot spot them. He saw a blinking light aloft at times, that might be a VTOL of some kind. He saw something that might be jet engines' exhaust, but whether the planes were concerned with his run he could not say. He had just demonstrated to the locals that he was far better armed than they had anticipated. He would wager good money that he had just exceeded the capabilities of the local law and that they he would now the military would take over. They could pose a real challenge and one he had to avoid at all costs. They might not be able to best him, far better than they had tried and failed. But they would slow him and that could be fatal. He was on a tight schedule and had no time to spend fighting.
The big question was what capabilities the military had, where they were and what their alert status was. It they were on a peacetime footing orders would have to be cut, munitions taken from storage and units formed up. Even rather professional armies would take a few hours for that and then he would be gone. But if this world was as dangerous as many he had known there might be planes with explosives on ready five alert on some runways, waiting to bomb his ass into next week. He did not have any intelligence that allowed for an estimate either way and that worried him.
On the other hand there was few time to worry, the road had been challenging enough. It had gone through the biggest inclines and sharpest curve's he had yet seen. He could not remember the last time when he had been driving 250 kph in a curve with one knee touching the ground. At one hill he had managed to crest it with such speed that his bike had flown more than a few meters and getting it under control at landing had been no mean feat. Riding at this speed needed all his experience, all of his attention and under any other circumstances it would have been a blast.
And driving like this had been the only thing that stood between him and disaster. It had taken him so close to the place where he could reenter the Webway that it was getting rather likely that he would be gone before the locals could mount a more forceful response.
10 minutes later the instrument on his tank indicated that his destination was ever more to the right of him. The road, the highway that had allowed him to reach his target it time to spare would no longer support him. There was no off-ramp, but another shot with the Melta allowed him to leave the highway at a place of his choosing.
There was a small, winding road that led through the woods that bordered the highway. He had to slow down considerably. He was close, so very close. Running into a tree or driving the bike into a ditch would not do now, especially as he had a bit of time. And it was rather unlikely the locals would ambush him here, he had left the road at a time and place of his choosing.
The flickering lights were the first indication that something was very wrong. He slowed down even more and made his way between the trees. He could see even less that way, but the quietness of his bike allowed him to listen. There were deep rumbles, the crack of shots and the chatter of rotor blades. There were also other sounds, pops that announced that air had just been displaced, the hiss of energy discharges and below that shouts and screaming. He had heard those sounds so many times before, they were like a jingle to welcome him back to where he belonged. He understood the noise well enough, could interpret it and a picture of the battle before him became ever clearer in his mind.
When he finally reached the forest's end he wasn't as surprised as he could have been. Only rarely had the Eldar tried to ambush him on this side of the Webway, normally they did not leave it as they feared Slaanesh's embrace. Here they had and the locals had found them before the Eldar found him. It had not been a peaceful encounter, which hardly surprised him. The Guardian's of the Webway were definitively of the shoot-forst-ask-questions-later kind and they would despise the mon-kays anyway.
By now there was a fully fledged fight on. There were no less than three Wraithknights towering over the battlefield like vengeful gods. They fired with fusion flames that stabbed into the darkness and nets that would cut any human into ground meat of they connected. The human-sized figure floated in the air, surrounded by a halo of light and lightning flicked from her hands, scouring the ground before her. Around her Eldar warriors shot streams of light at anything that moved.
There was a feeble rifle fire that rarely connected and was mostly ineffective when it did. Wherever a human dared to shot eldritch lightning and fire consumed him. Still, the fight was far from one-sided. Explosions raked the ranks of Eldar, showing where some artillery plied its trade. Behind Jaghatai a pair of VTOLs played a deadly game of hide-and-seek, popping up behind some ridge to fire a weapon or two and then disappear before return fire could kill them. The Khan knew that this would not last long, the Farseer would predict them sooner or later and they would die when they repeated the feat.
He was happy to see that at least one of the strikes had not been evaded by a holofield and had hit one of the Wraithknights enough to hurt. Some armored vehicle fired from a depression, its turret the only thing visible above ground. The first shot missed, but the second one went right into the Farseer's halo, extinguishing it for now. Several rockets rose from various places and showed they were guided when they followed the Wraithknights' movements. One seemed to stumble for a moment.
From what he saw the locals would lose quite a lot of the forces they had brought to the battlefield, but they would distract the Eldar enough. He would make the jump back to the Webway before the dandelion eaters even knew he was here and that would be that.
The Wraithknight was an impressive sight, half hidden in the kaleidoscope colors of his holofield. Its fusion guns would utterly vaporize any target it was aimed at and it was about to kill one of these pesky fliers that had wounded it so. The Farseer had already seen where it would emerge this time, reality just had to catch up to that and then the construct would avenge the wound it had received. Both arms were pointing in the direction they needed to be in a few seconds when the huge Wraithknight was briefly lit from behind. It seemed to have a halo or wings made of fire for a second. Then its torso exploded into so many shards, destroyed by a master-crafted Melta. The one to its side dropped when a leg was amputated by the same weapon. The third one turned on the spot to face the new danger when no less than four missiles from two helicopters entered its holofield. Two missed, two connected its flank and their shaped warheads bit deep into its side. The greenish tint to the explosions indicated that that pure chemistry was not the only thing in play and the Wraithknight dropped like a puppet bereft of its strings.
Two more armored vehicles emerged from the woods. They were armed with some sort of autocannon and raked the Eldar's ranks mercilessly. Soldiers followed them in, shooting at anything that moved.
Jaghatai Khan saluted them, even if he would not allow them to see him. They had earned his aid in this fight and he would remember this marvelous road for a long time. Whatever Autobahn meant, he liked it a lot. The flash of his disappearance was just one of many, it was unnoticed both by man and Eldar.
Jaghatai Khan was free to roam the Webway again, and by the map he had acquired with such efforts the exit to an Imperial world should be closer than ever.
Sea of Claws, close to Langeness Island
The air had the crystal clear quality that had been the storm's parting gift. It was cold enough to tingle the airways and draft the color from Svea's face. She had awoken early, still disturbed by her nightmare. The rest of her family was still asleep, so she had put on her coat and decided to go on a walk to clear the cobwebs in her head away. She silently closed the door and made her way through the yard. That was when she saw the footprints in the mud. The heavy rain that had accompanied the storm had shifted enough mud on the yard to make them visible and they were the only set of tracks to be seen. One set ran more or less parallel to hers and reached from the house to the middle of the yard. The other came from the stables and looked slightly off. They were too deep and had sharp edges to them a boot would not leave.
Both tracks met in the middle of the yard. None led from there.
Stargate, L3 point in orbit of the Warhammer World
The gate had nearly the same mass as the world that circled the sun on the same orbit on the opposite side. It was a short cylinder, several hundred meters long and a little more in diameter. Its walls seemed gossamer-thin from a distance, hardly fit to hold the ring together. The ring seemed to be featureless, but that was an illusion. It rotated at 48% of light speed, no details could be seen at such speed.
The seemingly thing walls were made from pure neutronium, a material so dense that a mere teaspoon of it had a mass of more than seven tons. So much mass moving at such speeds was something very powerful and it challenged the laws that ruled what humans thought as the real world considerably.
A silvery mass filled it, blocking what view into the gate was to be had. It had remained like this for more than 20,000 years. Now the silvery mass erupted with what looked like a lightning storm for the briefest of moments before a small, gray body emerged from it.
