C. Goto - Dawn of War

The rock itself seemed to shimmer with release, as the texts that it contained were freed to swim and shift before the eyes of a reader once again. It was as though the menhir wanted to be read. For the first time, Isador realised that the menhir was not a rock at all-it was a giant tear-drop of wraithbone, the mysterious material employed by eldar artists and engineers to construct their unfathomable technologies.

“What do you see, Isador?” asked Gabriel, approaching his friend from behind and placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.

Isador started at the touch, and his head snapped round to stare at his captain, his eyes wide and wild. “Oh, Gabriel,” he managed, bringing his shock under control and turning back to the menhir. The lights and the script had vanished, leaving no sign of ever having been there at all. “It was so beautiful…”

Gabriel looked at the rock for a moment, noting its graceful curves and its smooth lines. He shook his head vaguely. “Your eyes are different from mine, old friend. What did you learn?”

“The menhir is a marker. It must have been left here by the eldar thousands of years ago. It speaks of a bladed-key, buried beneath the ground for all time,” said Isador, his mind drifting back to the images that he had seen in the wraithbone.

“A key to what?” asked Gabriel.

“I am not sure. It would take me months to decipher all of the text,” lamented Isador.

Again, Gabriel looked up at the menhir and gazed at its perfectly smooth, flawless surface. He raised his eyebrows. “It is enough, I suppose, to know that the Alpha Legion and the eldar are both pursuing this key. Do you know where it is?”

“Yes. The runes are very clear. They were clearly intended to guide an eldar force to it at an important moment,” replied Isador, deep in thought.

Gabriel’s thoughts were catching up with those of his Librarian. “So, the eldar have been here before, and they anticipated the need for a return to Tartarus?”

“So it seems, Gabriel.”

“Did the historical records make any mention of an eldar invasion or presence on this planet in the past?” asked Gabriel, already sure that Isador would have mentioned such a thing.

“No, Gabriel. I can only assume that the eldar were here before the colonisation of Tartarus-before the Imperium’s records began,” said Isador, his mind racing with the possible implications of this knowledge.

“Can this all be coincidental?” asked Gabriel, giving voice to their joint concerns. “The return of the eldar, the presence of our old adversaries, the Alpha Legion, the invasion of the orks, and the imminent arrival of the warp storm?”

Isador shook his head. “I do not believe in coincidences-they are the symptoms of ignorance. I fear that the Blood Ravens may be the only force on this planet who do not know what is going on.”

The Striking Scorpion squad was first into the breach as the gate ground slowly open. Their new exarch-the eldar warrior that was once Jaerielle-was their spearhead, dancing and flipping through the hail of fire from the gunnery emplacements on the city wall. He was through the gate and into the courtyard on the other side before the mechanism had even wound open fully, flicking and darting between shots from the Imperial Guardsmen, as though they were moving too slowly to trouble him.

Inspired by their exarch, the emerald green figures of the rest of his squad stormed into the city behind him, flourishing their chainswords and dispatching sheets of shuriken fire from their pistols. Following in the wake of the Striking Scorpions came the reds and golds of the Fire Dragons, dousing the wall defences in chemical flames from their fire-lances and fusion guns. And then, bursting through the flames, hissed the Vypers and jetbikes, flashing through the open gate into the city streets under cover of heavy fire from the Falcon tanks outside.

The Falcons had slid to a halt in front of the walls, and were battering the gun platforms with barrages of fire from their shuriken cannons and lance arrays. The impacts strafed across the wall, blasting great chunks of rockcrete out of their structure and shaking the weapons emplacements.

The Imperial Guardsmen in the city defences found themselves in crumbling alcoves, with debris and rockcrete raining down onto them from great cracks in the superstructure. The fixings for their autocannons and multi-meltas were breaking free as the rockcrete splintered out from underneath them, denying them the stability needed for accurate fire.

Guardsman Hredel threw his weight against his weapon, hoping that his mass would keep the autocannon rooted while it fired a constant stream of shells down towards the breach in the open gates.

Down in the courtyard inside the gate, a smattering of Guardsmen, led by the hapless Bobryn, who had opened the gate and then regretted it instantly, staged a last ditch defence of the city. Eldar jetbikes zipped past them into the capital, not even bothering to engage the defenders. The Vypers slid to a halt in the courtyard, but did not open fire on the Guardsmen. Instead, their gun-turrets spun around and started to blast away at the rear of the wall, where the wall’s gun platforms were unshielded. Hredel turned to look into the courtyard just in time to see the withering hail of shuriken crash into his gunnery platform, killing him instantly. Meanwhile, Jaerielle sprang into the line of defenders in the courtyard, flourishing his toothed blade in a dizzying display of virtuosity.

Bobryn’s mouth dropped open as the eldar warrior spun through the air in a graceful arc, vaulting the impromptu barricade in a single bound, its blade whipped into a blur by the speed of its motion. He just had time to marvel at the skill of the alien, before the blade passed straight through his neck.

Jaerielle swooped and sliced with his chainsword, letting it dance all by itself, pulling him from one kill to the next in a frenzy of blood. The little stand of Guardsmen dwindled into nothing in a matter of seconds, and Jaerielle spun to a standstill in amongst the spread of dismembered corpses, striking the victory pose of the Striking Scorpions, with streams of mon-keigh blood coasting down his emerald armour.

As he struck the pose, Farseer Macha walked calmly through the gates into Lloovre Marr, flanked on both sides by a retinue of warlocks, claiming the city for Biel-Tan. She stood for a moment, motionless in the entrance to the courtyard. The barricades of the defenders were still in place, and the Striking Scorpions and Fire Dragons had fanned out around the perimeters-they showed little sign of having seen combat today. But there, standing on the far side of the barricades, was Jaerielle, surrounded by a litter of corpses and running with blood. His blade was held dramatically above his head, and his pistol was pointing at the ground, as he stretched his legs into a long, low stance.

The sound of a distant explosion made Macha turn and look back out of the open gates. In the distance, directly below the sun, was the imposing sight of Mount Korath. Its peak was a blaze of light, and a mushroom cloud of thick smoke and debris had plumed into the air above it, casting the valley into shadow as the cloud obstructed the sun for a moment. The Blood Ravens, thought Macha, hoping that her Warp Spiders had done their job.

In the foreground, the rest of the Biel-Tan army remained positioned for battle before the walls. The wraithguard trained their wraithcannons on the defensive gunnery positions, although most had already fallen silent. The Storm and Defender squads were starting to file through the gate, keeping the farseer in sight in case they were needed, but the battle for Lloovre Marr was basically over. The Swordwind had swept the pathetic defence before it and, turning again to look at Jaerielle, Macha wondered whether he could have done it all by himself.