a low, underground hangar. It had probably once been the storage cellar for the power facility, centuries ago. Sagging shelves loaded with dusty tools and pipe ends filled the surrounding walls. Empty slave cages were stacked in along the far wall, ready to be loaded into the Harvester’s yawning rear ramp.
The ship reacted to Sindul’s presence, display consoles becoming suffused by soft purple, blue and white lights. Hololithic displays were projected into the air, displaying the ship’s status in rolling eldar script.
141
With deliberate, practiced movements, Sindul delicately placed receptor fibres. The thin threads interfaced directly with his fingertips, trailing translucent optic thread from each of his fingers. He contorted his fingers like an orchestral maestro and the ship responded with an agonisingly slow whine, the Impaler’s thrust engines building power.
Then an object whistled past his ear, hard and fluid‐quick. Sindul flinched, thinking something on board had malfunctioned. But when he glanced sidelong he realised it was not a malfunction at all. An arrow had thudded into his pilot cradle. A wooden shaft protruded out of the soft polyfibre headrest, a shaft fletched with a red and black feather.
Shrieking with rage, Sindul saw Gumede drop from the hatch and behind him, Barsabbas.
Wretched Barsabbas. The Blood Gorgon crashed through the hatch and landed on the thin prow. His weight made the large ship dip forwards. Steadily, hand‐over‐hand, Barsabbas began to climb towards the cockpit.
Sliding back the Impaler’s windshield like an eyelid, Sindul drew a splinter pistol from beneath the seat. He loosed a volley of choppy shots at the Traitor Marine, the splinter fire dancing off his ceramite like solid rain. He did not manage more than six shots before Barsabbas reached him.
Barsabbas tore away the canopy and his hand shot for Sindul’s throat, clamping tight and dragging him out, tearing him out of the seat restraints. He shook the eldar, knocking his limbs loosely about the air, shaking the pistol out of his hand.
‘Look how senseless that was!’ Barsabbas shouted through his vox‐grille.
‘Don’t kill me!’ Sindul managed to gasp in‐between his head lashing back and forth upon his neck.
Maintaining the chokehold, Barsabbas unhooked the lotus‐head mace from his girdle and he looped it back like a loaded catapult. ‘You knew escape would be your death, but you took that choice. I see no other way.’
‘You need me to fly the ship!’ wailed Sindul.
Barsabbas lowered his mace. ‘Why?’
‘To take you to Ur.’
Barsabbas let Sindul drop bonelessly back into the pilot seat. ‘I’m glad you understand.
Fly well, and perhaps next time I will let you escape for real.’
‘You allowed me to escape?’
‘To lead me to your ship – yes. Ask yourself this, would you have ever told me? No, yours is a patient race. As frail as your physical bodies may be, the eldar have always been patient. You could have waited for years before you tried to escape to this ship. You work differently from the short‐lived races.’
The dark eldar allowed himself a gloating smirk.
Barsabbas crouched down and peered closely at Sindul, his helmet almost level with the dark eldar’s face. ‘I may be of the Chaos flock, but I am not an irrational man. You cannot coerce me through fear alone. Take me to Ur. Do so without delay or deception. In return, when I leave Hauts Bassiq, you will be free to go.’
‘ If you leave Hauts Bassiq,’ Sindul corrected.
‘If I die, then you die. Can you not see that our fates are intertwined? The gods have made it so.’
142
THE HARVESTER CLIMBED in altitude rapidly, angled against the land below at a nauseating slant and rapidly leaving it behind. They pierced the atmospheric clouds at mach speeds.
Except for the gloss of sun reflecting from the craft’s nose, the world around blurred like wet paint: the brown earth, white sky and grey clouds streaking together into a tunnel of streaming colours.
Barsabbas had utilised the most destructive human war machines, but the dark eldar technology left him in a state of jealous awe. The soldier within him could not deny that the vessel was a dangerous beast. It floated, spiralled and levelled out with a dexterity that was weightless. It could change directions without the hauling, air‐dragging lunges of an Imperial fighter. Most impressive of all, grav‐dampeners seemed to change the interior air pressure and speed. It felt as if they were not moving at all; there was no hint of velocity or momentum. Even standing in the fluted cockpit, unable to fit into any of the seats, Barsabbas did not budge