Cav ducked as the first line of black energy shot down from the mountain. An alien craft had just emerged and rained death down at random. He saw an ork get hit. When it fell in two, Cav saw its midsection had been disintegrated. More shots came down. One cut down into his group. Cav felt his hair stand on end.
"Everyone alright?" asked Cav, looking around. Everyone, including Kins and Arcantillius, was running from the mountain. The shot had missed, but the stone it had hit had disappeared. Mhal remained, standing unsteadily up. He was still dazed, but the appearance of the new aliens shook him to his feet. Cav helped him forward as energy blasts disintegrated holes into the rock around them. They jumped into a hab with everyone else and paused.
"They've come to raid you, to take as many prisoners as they can," Mhal gasped with all the strength he had. "Thousands of people are in danger. You don't want to know what they do to their captives."
"I have an idea," Cav replied. For once, he was sure he had found an enemy he hated more than the orks. He would die to kill some of Sectraa's ilk. At least then he could be free of this awful city. "So what do we do?"
"Get back to the Imperial Guard and stay with them," Mhal replied. "My farseer could activate the titan, I don't know. But you have to get to safety. They won't attack the Imperial Guard."
"Who then if not the guard?" asked Arcantillius.
"They're slavers. They'll attack whoever can't defend themselves. I'll bet this war will have made a lot of refugees. They'll zip past the army, zip past the orks and attack them," Mhal coughed and beat his chest. "You have to keep yourselves safe. My people are probably falling back to safety now…" Kins looked Mhal in the face.
"They're not your people Mhal, you're not an eldar. You are a human, like the Emperor, not a bloody xenos!" Kins spat. Mhal coughed again and shook his head.
"What the hell has humanity ever given me?" he asked.
"Damn it, you said you knew how to fight them!"
"They're attackin en mass. They need the portal to fall back to, assuming they don't have webway portals," replied Mhal. "They're built to be fast, not strong, so that's why they can't face your armies. That's why you have to fall back." Cav turned towards the door. He squeezed his lasgun in anger.
"Form up on me 89th," Cav said. His boys obeyed. Eldar or not, these creatures were going to despoil his home. He thought about the tattoo on his arm and what it meant. He thought of his home, how it was undefended. These dark eldar would have a feast if they found it.
"Mhal said we should get back to guard lines," Arcantillius replied. "I order you to come. A more efficient retaliation can be organized…"
"They'll be long gone if they're as fast as Mhal thinks," Cav said. His young comrades agreed. "I hate this place. I really don't mind if I leave it. Come on, let's kill some of these aliens." Mhal coughed.
"Well, I don't think I'm walking far, so I'm staying," he said. Arcantillius shook his head and turned. Kins agreed. But Cav disagreed and took both men aside to solemly tell them of a plan he had. If successful, it could kill many of these dark eldar enemies. He needed some of them to stay for it to work. When he was done, Arcantillius and Kins were in agreement.
The boys of the 89th and five 112th guardsmen were allowed to leave to rejoin imperial lines. Cav remained behind, determined to see his plan through.
…
Ralreth stalked across the ruins, splinter rifle raised, as the rest of his squad moved with him. The main force had passed over them, but the troops on the ground still had some killing to do. If there were more Halivorians in these ruined habs, Ralreth would taste their blood. As for his craftworld enemies, there was no sign.
Marshrax raised his pulse rifle and shot a wounded ork as it dragged itself down a heavily shelled road. The greenskins around the mountain had been broken by the raiders as they passed by. Now, only twitching survivors remained.
Suddenly, the habs on either side of them lit up with lasfire. Ralreth felt a burning shot pierce his forearm. To his right, Skrealsh dropped, a hole in his head. Marshrax dodged back, firing his pulse rifle at the windows. He and Ralreth fled down the way they came as the rest of their squad was massacred: the last twitching corpse going still as shots tore through it.
Curse them to Slaanesh! Marshrax shrieked in disgust. Why must we take this assignment? Ralreth messaged Sectraa, tapping in the warning on his forearm communicator. He took one quick look behind him as he ran. In a slide of his foot, he tripped Marshrax and rolled into the shadows.
A singing lasbolt lashed from the shadows and towards the dark eldar, clipping off the top of Marshrax's head rather than aiming for the faster, harder target.
Ralreth smiled at his own cunning. He never liked Marshrax anyway, using alien weapons. If anyone saw that, he had a lie already planned. Ralreth slipped into the darkness, his mind endlessly plotting away. If Ralreth was ever to be archon, he had to be a schemer.
…
The first squad of dark eldar had been an easy kill, but Mhal warned that there would be more. If there were mandrakes around, they would come. Cav and his friends listened to Mhal's lecture on mandrakes and how to fight them. They waited in silence, in tense silence, for a full hour.
When the third hour began, Arcantillius and the survivors of his group were finally able to leave. Kins granted them permission to return to Imperial lines after Arcantillius convinced him the worst of the dark eldar were gone. Mieel went with Arcantillius, as did two other 89th boys who begged Cav to let them leave. Mieel was among them. His departure was no loss.
And so they waited, the day slowly ticking away.
Around them, watching with black eyes, flocks of mandrakes had gathered in the dark, to strike and kill the humans who waited within.
…
I have it the farseer said, But the warriors of the Black Phalanx stand in our way. We cannot get by them. We must wait for the ork to open the gate and move at the last moment
Yes replied the exarch. A moment later, the farseer gave a signal. The Dire Avengers advanced into the vault just as the sound of shooting broke the air. They ran out to find Skullkicker assaulting the Black Phalanx. They fled across the floor, towards the hallway in the side of the room. Kiskantsh could sense the titan, awake now, behind the walls. They would be united soon.
Splinter rifles cut down two Dire Avengers. Kiskantch ducked as Skulkicker dove on them, all claws and anger. He ran across the floor and into the hall.
Run my lord farseer! Nhimeia's last words were as Skullkicker twisted his noble body in two. The Black Phalanx was retreating, letting the Alaitoc warriors and Skullkicker kill one another. As the last brave eldar was murdered, Skullkicker twisted his head to search for the farseer.
…
They'd arrived to find the landing zone in disarray. Curth and his 89th comrades could hear the shooting long before they saw anything. Stepping through crater-filled streets, passing dead humans and orks, it was like walking through a vision of a war-hell. As he continued, he and the boys saw signs of a third presence.
"I thought Mhal said they wouldn't attack us," Tigerson cursed as they passed a leman russ that had been gutted by a weapon that made perfect holes in its side and created no smoke.
"I guess he was wrong," replied Curth in frustration. They were soon back amidst the fighting, making vox contact with other platoons and getting into as good a position as they could hope for. They found the raider, swamped by ork forces, battling street-to-street in the perimeter around their landing zone, which was lobbing shells into ork forces from behind a screen of landers. Through the wartorn streets and across noisy city blocks, they hurried, dodging orks. When they got through the orks and began to pass by the dark uniformed Chazzan offworlders, the group ran faster.
Within five minutes, the Chazzans directed them to the rest of the regiment and the rest of the 89th. At long last, they were back together.
"They said they encountered dark eldar," Curth heard a number of 112th officers speak into their vox sets. Command was ignorant to the presence of the dark eldar. So apparently the dark eldar were not attacking the guardsmen en mass, but in quick, lightning raids on isolated forces. Of course, it was just as Mhal had described them. In a lot of ways, they were the antithesis of the orks. Low in number, subtle and silent opposed to the innumerable violence brought by the orkish foe. But both shared the same thirst for battle and bloodshed, so they were more like different faces of the same beast rather than separate monsters.
Curth reloaded his lasgun and ducked into the crater he had jumped into. Stolce, beside him, was hard-eyed and looked angry. He was not the whimpy victim Curth loved to pick on, but a veteran fighter with a face full of dirt. He looked like one of the 112th as he reloaded his lasgun and waved orders to other craters.
"So what do they look like?" Stolce asked, aiming into the ruins, towards the ruined tower the orks had garrisoned. The flashes of muzzles lit up its windows. Cannon hadn't brought it down yet because there were none available. Across this blasted patch of tortured city, there were only living men to fight the greenskins.
"A lot like us, but slim and hairless," Curth saw horned shadows leap out of the dust blown up by a round of orkish artillery. He aimed and waited as those shapes surfaced to turn into charging alien barbarians with scrappy blades. His lasgun, and the lasguns of others, picked orks off their feet. A heavy orkish bullet skipped off the lip of his crater. Curth didn't duck down.
"Two alien species? What do you think command'll do?"
"Prolly chase them," Curth looked for targets. Those windows were mighty hard to hit from this range and ammo was brutally limited. "They'd need the navy to run down the dark eldar though."
"I just hope they get them. The orks are enough, thank you," Stolce replied. Tigerson, the only other occupant of the crater, elbowed Stolce in the ribs.
"Shut up and fight."
"Don't hit me when I'm shooting or I'll have you written up," Stolce snapped back. Tigerson jolted, startled. Curth smiled, knowing Stolce had him outranked. Stolce, with his misfit mother, could give Tigerson the ganger a flogging for insubordination. Strange.
Another ork shell whistled and exploded behind them. Another whistle and a hellish burst of dirt showered soil and rubble into their crater. There were human body parts mixed in with it. Curth saw a man with half his head blown off stagger past his crater, still alive through some cruel humor of nature. An ork shot put him down.
"I wish someone could kill those damn mortars!" Stolce screamed, shooting. Over the chaos of firefights both near and far, Curth heard the sound of ork voices crying their inhuman words aloud with the fury of a storm. Through the haze of smoke and floating dust that covered the battlefield, he saw great dark shapes roll forwards.
"Back! Get back!" It was Stolce's captain, Sage, giving the order. The units rose up and fought backwards, shooting as they fell back into the ruins, sliding closer to the landing zone from which there would be no escape. Ork machine guns opened up. Lines of dust thrown up by impacting rounds traced paths of death through the retreating humans. He heard Tigerson laugh. That freak.
Curth ducked behind a rusted civilian car, a wreck since the war began, and loosed enough lasbolts to drop a hunched shadow coming out of the smoke from behind the advancing shapes. He ducked as shots hammered the car in reply. The ear-splitting CRASH CRASH of rounds impacting against the metal wrung in his hearing even after he'd left the car behind. Behind him, he could hear orks roaring in triumph.
So many. So many.
Before him, he saw a line of wrecked habs, reinforced with crude earthworks made by the raiders. Chazzans and an olive skinned people Curth didn't recognize were moving to make room for the Ersonians and Morchaghan warriors. He saw a number of support weapons amongst those houses. Standing with them was a grey sentinel, towering over men like a giant from a story. Curth liked to pretend it could stand against the orks that were chasing them. He vaulted over a pile of sandbags and joined Stolce and Tigerson behind them.
"Murvao Akaza," introduced an olive sergeant with a curling black moustache, "Second company of the 78th Masouel People's Guard."
"Curth Tajennis, first group, 89th Ersonian PDF Volunteers." It was volunteers, not shotstoppers. He would not tolerate that name. He would never again hear it. "Sorry we had to drag you all the way from Masouel, Akaza, but there's orks here." The sergeant smiled and aimed his laspistol.
"It is alright, we die in the Emperor's name!" Sergeant Akaza shouted.
"We die!" shouted the Masouel guardsmen in triumphant reply as the orks began to appar through the smoke of their falling shells. "We die?" That was their warcry? No matter how good Curth thought his 89th might be, he still knew his place. They were PDF volunteers. They would never be as brave as these men.
A flaming rocket shot from the smoke, slamming into the front of the sentinel. The burning giant's legs crumbled under it and it fell into a flaming heap. From the smoke came the orks, either on foot or stacked on the roofs of the treaded monstrosities that rolled out in support of their tidal advance. Curth felt his crotch grow wet. He hadn't even noticed the tingle of his bladders.
As one, the men of four Imperial worlds opened up on the enemy. Curth had seen orks die before and now the vision was growing old. Visions of green bodies being studded with lasfire filled his wartorn nightmares and would haunt him until he died. But the thrill never ceased. It didn't even register until late that the orks were extremely close. In a few seconds they would be upon them.
Curth saw the cannons nailed to the orkish machines cough, rather than shoot. Habs exploded, men were thrown into the air. Curth's hearing left him for a moment or two and dust washed over him. He waved it away from his face as he staggered back. He couldn't see the orks behind the dust. Oh no.
"Curth!" Stolce was beside him, still shooting. "Rally your group and bring them into that hab behind us. We'll coordinate a defense from there." Curth could only nod before orks swarmed out of the dust. So much for that plan.
"We die!" Akaza yelled bravely, raising a silver scimitar above his head. Around him, his fellows cheered as they drew elaborate swords to battle the orks. The Ersonians pulled from the orks, but the Masouels attacked them hand to hand.
It was blood for blood, an eye for an eye. Both sides carved one another apart. Men were thrown back, chopped apart by orks. Greenskinned savages were severed by imperial swordsmanship. The melee washed over everything. Curth could not hope to rally anyone in this chaos.
He ducked back as a big ork bowled two Masouels down to the ground. Curth shot the ork in its armoured face, but couldn't melt through its metallic mask. The ork swung at him with its axe and missed. Curth backed into Akaza, who jumped past him and hacked the ork's head off with a swing of his blade.
"Bravery, young one!" Akaza encouraged. "With courage, we cannot break!" Three charging orks hammered towards him. The sergeant backed away and was lost in the swirling press of bodies. Curth raised his lasgun and shot a passing ork in its huge arm. It didn't even turn towards him as its cleaver cut a guardsman and his upraised sword in two.
"Curth!" It was Stolce. He'd rallied his group and stood with Sage and a few score of Chazzan and Morchaghan soldiers behind the melee. Curth jumped into the group as they fired, gunning down barbarians that came close. Curth tensed as a hab that rose above the brawl gave way to the weight of an advancing ork tank.
"Rockets! Away!" a rough Chazzan voice ordered. Curth watched two rockets, one after another, swept from two teams of guardsmen with launchers. They hit the same spot, one hit after another. The tank stopped and flames licked out of its wound. There was a cheer, even in the heat of things.
They fought on, using their failing ammunition to kill dozens more greenskins. The sacrifice of the Masouels held the orks back long enough to reduce their ranks to a mere handful. The fight grew smaller until the orks withdrew, leaving a mere handful of cheering Masouels in the middle of the brawl. The noble sergeant was not among them.
"Back into position and prepare for the next wave!" the Chazzans ordered. Curth shivered as he did so. Even after scavenging what he could, he was still down to one power pack. If the orks returned, he would not have the ammunition to fight them off.
…
The humans who had once lived in Urbanis 1 and 2 now lived on the outskirts of Essendrav on the Imperial section of territory. Millions of people lived in miserable, starving conditions, praying to the Emperor to let the war end so they could go home. Hundreds were dying of disease brought on from the dirty water and lack of food. The sheer size of these camps meant they could not be patrolled very well, especially with the army committed to war in the city.
This raid would be delicious. Archon Naxcksif smiled with his metal fangs from the window of his invader while his raider fleet swept down through the evening towards the helpless humans. With most of the young men (and many women) away fighting for the city, the millions here were elderly or very young. So weak, so helpless, and yet so many of them. Archon Naxckisif knew his raiders would return home with fat cages full of weeping humans. Let the slaughter begin.
As his first raiders landed, the guns aboard them opened up, sewing carnage down upon the sparse sentries posted. The blackout bomb was dropped and it exploded, throwing a shockwave across the camp. All lights went out and all vox sets died. In silence and in darkness, the enslavement would happen. Let the evening scream!
Brutal dark eldar warriors leapt out of their raiders while other skiffs flew over them to deploy elsewhere, so to catch slaves with maximum efficiency. The dark soldiery of the kabal deployed silently and with lightning speed, in a formation they had rehearsed for years. Kicking human forms were dragged out of tents or dredged up by the nets of passing dark eldar raiders. Slowly, as the raiders ate into the encampment, the silence of the evening grew cold with the screams of refugees. Humans struggled as formations of shadows scooped them up. A few fought with their fists and were bludgeoned and dragged towards empty cages. No weapons were to be fired. They had not come to kill.
Yet, a weapon did fire. It turned a line of the evening into day as the laser broke through the darkening encampment. From his invader, the archon saw one of his raiders explode in half, its two pieces shooting into the tents as they were blown back, its crew turned to dust. A second shot engulfed a second raider, which simply ceased to be under the onslaught of bright laser fire.
Stunned, the archon turned his eyes to the attacker.
Towering over the encampment was a slender shadow upon two legs. Its arms were delicate cannons, its head was tall and kingly. It moved like an acrobat. It fired with perfect accuracy. From target to target, it aimed with precision. Delicate raiding vehicles were broken like twigs in a gale by the white laser energy it hurled down onto the murderous kabal fleet. Shot after shot, the titan punished them. The brutally effective dark eldar formation disintegrated as easily as their vehicles. What was a delightfully precise and rapid invasion became a hurried and disorderly retreat.
"An craftworld titan?" the archon cried in disbelief and rage as his invader wheeled around, abandoning his ground forces. Laser shots were turned aside by the invader's void shielding, but only barely. The windows glowed with light as laser shots crashed against their shields. Naxcksif felt the air grow hot and one of the windows shattered. Like his temper, the air grew even hotter. His only comfort was knowing that one titan could not wreck his whole force.
"Sectraa! You fool! How could you not have known about that!" the Naxcksif roared. He lunged at Sectraa with his sabre, but Sectraa dodged back and unfolded his claws. The archon's idiotic subordinate hissed.
"I said Alaitoc was here!" Sectraa shrieked. The archon lunged for him, but Sectraa was already jumping. Naxcksif's sword rammed itself into Sectraa's gut as Sectraa's claws clawed into his throat. Rolling on the ground, trying to wring the life out of the other, both dark eldar were cursing one another when the invader finally exploded.
But it was not the lonely titan that claimed them.
A wing of thunderbolts roared over the encampment, strafing the retreating aliens. Another wing passed, and another and another. The last dark eldar of the ill-fated raid died outside the camp, torn apart by heavy bolters.
Descending from the sky came several vultures, who searched the burning remnants of the raid for survivors. Bright white searchlights pierced the night, illuminating circles of the refugee camp. The pilots caught sights of tents, billowing in the blast of their engines, or fleeing refugees. Now and then, they sighted wrecked alien ships and twisted, broken cages.
They did not see an eldar titan or any signs that such a thing had ever been there.
To the pilots of those vultures, their orders to standby for a dark eldar attack had paid off. Had it not been for word from Urbanis 1 that those alien slavers were there, then they would not have been so swift.
Years later, survivors would speak of an angel of the Emperor that showed up, spears in hand, to rain death onto the raiders of shadow.