Chapter 5 - The Aftermath
Kade thought he caught the corner of Commissar Bellaire's mouth twitch upwards as they watched one of the dancing warriors fall to the ground. The rest of the strange army had fled deep into the desert and the small squad had no hopes of following them. Kade's ears began to ring as the screeches, explosions, and squelches of battle were replaced by a stifling silence. The near-maddening noiselessness dragged on as the squad waited for any sign of movement from the putrid aftermath of the melee.
One of the remaining guardsmen finally broke the silence with a croak, "Is it over?"
Before anyone else could respond, the Commissar snapped "No." Abruptly rising from the crater and striding towards the battlefield, the Commissar shouted back "'It' isn't over until we find where those Xenos ran off to and purge them from this planet!"
After giving each other wary glances, the rest of the squad followed the Commissar. They carefully picked through the bodies, firing a bullet here and there to eliminate the wounded and still screaming daemonettes. Belthor muttered a warning to be on the lookout for the fallen Xeno and Kade could have sworn he heard the Commissar grumble something about "Eldar trickery." However, as they were wading through pools of blood and squelching over daemonic entrails, they saw no sign of any Eldar presence.
They considered abandoning their search when Uriel spotted a swatch of checkered fabric waving in the winds off of a fallen daemonette's talon. A trail of blood led from the fabric to a particularly large pile of corpses. The men all froze and Sergeant Belthor gave silent signals to approach the bodies, giving them a wide berth so to stay out of ambush range.
Sprinting around the pile, they spotted a lone Xeno laying in a puddle of blood and pressed against the daemons as if she had been trying to hide. They all had their guns aimed at her, but she didn't respond- not even a flinch. The men looked on with quiet anticipation, wondering if she was even still alive. Hidden behind a gruesome mask, her face gave no clues whether or not she was alive or conscious to see them.
After some consideration, Belthor barked at the alien, "Xeno! We can see you breathing! We watched your battle with the daemons and demand to know why your army has dared step foot on a planet belonging to the Emperor!"
Kade held his breath as they waited for a response, but his medical training told him that the Eldar was likely unconscious from blood loss. She had a huge gash in her left leg and whatever breaths she was taking only moved her chest a hairsbreadth. Commissar Bellaire, though, had no sympathy or patience to see if she was conscious or not. He raised his pistol and shot the ground inches from the alien's face.
She flinched.
"Filth! In the name of the Holy Emperor, where is the rest of your army?" Bellaire shouted at the apparently conscious alien.
A raspy breath came from the alien. Then she spat out "Leave me to die in shame Mon-keigh. My battle is not with you."
Bellaire's face quickly clouded with hate, "No Xeno scum can even feign to know the wishes and campaigns of the Emperor. You have declared war simply by existing and now your kind must be purged from this planet. You WILL tell us where to find your cowardly comrades!"
Kane swore he heard a short laugh from the alien at this statement. She replied "Those daemons were only the beginning. As you waste your time on me, your city's clock is nearing its end. Now let me be!"
The Commissar walked briskly to Belthor, "Sergeant Limanowitz, we need to find the rest of those Xenos but this desert is too large to efficiently run a search. I could interrogate the alien here, but the Inquisitor would probably do so much more effectively. What do you think the odds are of this squad successfully bringing this Xeno back into the city without it dying?"
Kade watched Limanowitz consider this question. Like all true citizens of the Imperium, his men hated the Xenos but he figured they would not kill this one if they were ordered not to. He also assumed that a wounded alien would not put up much of a fight against apprehension, a dangerous assumption but it looked like this one could barely breathe.