Editing The Tales of the Emperasque: Part Fifteen (section)

==9-120-001-M42==
“Under attack?” Vect said softly. “However is that?”<br>
“No idea, my Lord Vect,” the unfortunate messenger said nervously. “The dirty apes simply appeared nearby. Perhaps one of the Corsairs was captured, and convinced to sell his knowledge?”<br>
Vect snorted in contempt. “Defeated by humans? Let them rot. Seal off the gate.”<br>
“As you wish, Lord Vect,” the messenger said, bowing out.<br>
Vect stood, and glanced out the window of his throne room to the twisting geometries of Commorragh. The mon-keigh may have had their Imperium, certainly, but this…this was HIS empire.<br>
A Webway gate in the distant, red sky flickered and died completely, signifying the loss of the connection to the station the apes were conquering. Vect nodded dispassionately. It was the least they deserved, losing to mere humans. Let the eternity of torment take them.

Jaghatai brushed a chunk of Ork Freeboota off of his pauldron and stared at the room the brute had been guarding: the station armory. “Superb,” he announced. “Boarders, the armory is ours. Direct your attention to the Gate rooms.”<br>
“Lord Khan, this is Mike Six, the Gate room is vacant,” one of the Minotaur officers reported. “The Gate is dead, power systems decoupled. Looks like the Gate on the other side was destroyed, or had its power interrupted.”<br>
Jaghatai cursed. “Acknowledged. Are the Dark Eldar showing any sign of retreat or surrender?”<br>
“Negative,” the officer reported, glancing down at the remains of the Mandrake at his feet. “They’re fighting for their lives.” The Khan thought that over for a moment, a plan forming in his mind.<br>
“Are they aware that the Gate is destroyed?”<br>
“Possibly not, Lord, the Gate room is secured entirely now,” the Minotaur reported.<br>
“Then we shall maintain the illusion that the Gate is operational,” Jaghatai said. “Herd the xenofilth into a pincer attack.”<br>
“As you will it, my Lord,” the Minotaur said. “How shall we proceed?”<br>
“Are any of your men equipped with teleporters?” Jaghatai asked, prying the sealed armory door open.<br>
“Four, plus the Terminators,” the Minotaur said, reloading his bolter as his men finished off the last few, feebly twitching Gate guards.<br>
“None of my men are, but I suspect…yes,” Jaghatai said with a smirk. The armory, in addition to the usual array of splinter, pulse, shuriken, and other Eldar weapons, contained a smattering of human and Orkish and Kroot weapons, to equip the mercenaries. “Is the path between us clear?”<br>
“Aye, sir,” the officer reported.<br>
“Good. I’ll be right there.”

Archon Caled’rios, meanwhile, was having a poor day. “Mon-keigh scum…” he grated, digging his clawed nails into the human leather of his seat. “…you will regret this…helm, take us into the station, through the Gate.”<br>
“Yes, Master,” the drone at the helm mewled, dragging his warped hands over the control stubs. The Imperial battlefleet was between them and the station, and managed a few, paltry salvos at the Dark Eldar group. The raider ships, however, were built specifically for slipping past defenses, and tore past the Imperial ships with only minimal damage.<br>
As they neared the station proper, a swarm of fighters and gunships drew off from their patrol routes to engage them, peppering the Dark Eldar convoy with bolts and lasers, picking off a few escorts and a captured freighter or two. The main bulk of the convoy surged through, burning the vacuum for the Gate at the heart of the circular station.<br>
“Master, we approach the Gate,” the helmsman managed.<br>
“Hail Controls, we are Caled’rios Group, returning from the harvest,” the Archon said, including the emergency alert phrase…but no response came.<br>
“Master, they do not reply,” the helmsman said.<br>
A frown of pure rage cracked the porcelain face of the Archon, who dug his fingers into his chair until the leather cracked. “Send it again.” The helmsman did so, but again, no reply came.<br>
“We are cut off,” the Archon muttered. “Vect, when I see you again, I will cleave your head from your shoulders.”

“The aliens seem to have grasped their predicament, Lord,” the fleet captain reported.<br>
“Take their engines,” the Khan ordered, walking into the smaller, internal personnel Gate room. The bag of loot from the armory clanked off his armor, drawing the eyes of the Minotaur troops guarding the room. “When their ships are immobile, they will attempt to self-destruct and re-board the station, and recapture this smaller Gate.”<br>
“Aye,” the fleet captain said, nodding at his gunnery officer. The officer tapped a few keys on his panel, sending his targeting orders to the gunners. The ship’s lances fired, carving through the armor of the suddenly slowing Dark Eldar ships, slicing through hull plates and crew until they bisected engines and power conduits. The ships careened off-course, with several slamming into the station outright. The other vessels, including the Archon’s, slowed to a crawl, desperately firing off forward thrusters to avoid collision.<br>
“Abandon ship, all hands,” the Archon barked into the ship’s vox. “Bring as many of the Imperials in the hold as possible.” He didn’t need to mention that getting back into Commorragh would probably mean bartering them all away.

“And here they come,” Jaghatai said under his breath, as tiny black tendrils leeched from the hulls of the stricken Dark Eldar ships, and Dark Eldar, herding clusters of terrified Imperial citizens and ship crewers through short-range teleporters and Webway tunnels into the station. A Minotaur Assault Marine stepped next to him, waiting for the signal.<br>
“Lord Khan?”<br>
“Do it,” Khan said, anticipation tightening his grip on his bolter. The Minotaur pumped his fist twice, and the small group of White Scars and Minotaurs in the Gate room dispatched their orders. “And…here we go,” he finished.<br>
Caled’rios felt the thin filaments of his teleport field recede, and he stepped forth into an empty corridor on the space station. The bodies of four or five crew and a slave dotted the ground, surrounded by bolt fragments and pellets of buck. The lingering Warp-scent of suffering, and terrified souls, lingered in the air, and Caled’rious shook his head wistfully, scattering his black hair over his armor. If only he had time to spend…

A metallic clanking noise behind him drew his attention. He slunk into the shadows, silently reaching for his sidearm. A human soldier, one he distantly recognized as leader of the mercenaries he had hired to watch over the slaves, since his own men couldn’t be trusted not to do it, walked through the hatch, quietly sweeping the corners with his assault shotgun. Caled’rios waited until the human was looking away before emerging from cover. “You, human. What happened here?” he demanded, gesturing at the carnage.<br>
The human reacted instantly, flinging himself to the ground beside a topped slave, locking his shotgun onto Caled’rios with all the speed and precision of a Hydra battery. His eyes widened when he saw the speaker. “You! You son of a bitch, how did you get back here?!” he demanded, clambering back to his feet.<br>
“Fool. The technologies of the Eldar are beyond your understanding. Now answer me! How did this happen?” Caled’rious hissed.<br>
“Not so advanced that they can read a simple battle site,” the human sneered, his shotgun not wavering an inch. “The Imperium attacked. Space Marine boarders on one side, Navy on the other, boarding troops fighting towards the Gate controls, ships taking out weapons.”<br>
“I mean here, inside,” the Dark Eldar said with monumental patience.<br>
“What the bloody hell does it look like? A few slaves got their hands on weapons, broke free when your idiot brigade panicked, and got caught in the crossfire between the Marines and my men,” the mercenary said.

The deck shuddered as something exploded, very nearby. “The Gates. Were they held?” Caled’rios asked. “Your men can no more escape this station than mine if they haven’t.”<br>
“Don’t know,” the human said, stooping to retrieve an intact concussion grenade from the floor, turning it over in his free hand before slipping it into a pocket. “I think so. The Marines weren’t too numerous. No Terminators that I saw.”<br>
“Good. Then we have a chance,” Caled’rios said, turning from the human towards the hatch.<br>
“ ‘We?’” the human said ominously. Caled’rios turned to face the human, a pithy comeback dying on his lips. A chunk of something hard and metallic bounced off his forehead, and he flinched back in surprise. The human dropped to one knee, his shotgun flaring. Caled’rios lurched backwards a step, buckshot bouncing off of his armor, but he was already recovering, and drew his splinter pistol, firing it on the treacherous human. The human raised one arm, and the splinters bounced off, shattering on the metal plates beneath his skin. “You left my men to die, alien,” the human spat, firing another cartridge into the Dark Eldar’s armor.<br>
“Traitor!” the Eldar bellowed, sliding to one knee under the salvo, and lashing out with a taloned glove at the man’s waist. He howled in pain, collapsing onto his back, shotgun clattering to the ground. Caled’rios continued his roll, stopping in a crouch next to the man’s head, talons mere centimeters from his throat. “You thought to defeat me?!” he snarled.

“Not ‘thought,’ filth,” the human said, smiling through a mask of pain. His augmetic arm, running off its own power supply, snapped sideways like a striking snake, launching the grenade, from which the human had drawn the pin he had used to get the alien’s attention, directly into Caled’rios’ eyes.<br>
With a deafening *BANG,* the bomb went off, instantly blinding and deafening the hypersensitive Eldar senses of the Archon, who stabbed downwards with a panicked thrust. But the mercenary wasn’t there, he had slapped his free hand against the ground, rolling out of the way, and he rammed his knife into the joint between the alien’s neck and collar. Caled’rios died instantly, his soul ripped screaming from its housing, off to the Warp, to please Slaanesh. The mercenary watched the black corpse slump aside, shaking off the after-effects of the blast.<br>
“How can a member of a race that spends its every waking moment dying slowly be so bad at seeing its own death coming?” the human muttered, rooting around in his pockets for a blood coagulant. He splashed it on his wound, snarling against the pain.<br>
A horrific scream, abruptly truncated, announced the death of another Dark Eldar up above. The merc grimaced. The aliens weren’t reinforcing his men fast enough. He couldn’t win.<br>
He struggled to his feet again, gripping his shotgun, and painfully reloading. “Not dead yet, Marine,” he muttered bitterly.

The Dark Eldar crews, fleeing their crippled ships, hurried towards the Gate, merging groups whenever they could, sometimes with slaves in tow, sometimes not. None of them had been able to raise Caled’rios on comm; in fact he seemed to be dead, and that was seen as further proof of what most of them had come to suspect: he hadn’t had what it took to be leader. Dominance battles would have to wait until the relative safety of Commorragh had been reached, however.<br>
One of the newly self-elected leaders of the Dark Eldar contingent led a large group of the aliens, and a few mercenaries that had somehow survived that long, towards the Gate room, avoiding prowling packs of Minotaur Assault Marines. The twisted xeno forced the Gate room hatch open, and immediately tripped over the corpse of a Kroot mercenary, sprawled over his weapon in a tangle.<br>
“Fan out!” he snarled, a trap evident. The room was ankle-deep in corpses, mostly other Dark Eldar, but a few of every race of mercenaries too. His followers spread over the floor, occasionally prodding a fallen comrade for signs of life.

Jaghatai watched their progress on his auspex, wondering whether they would even stop to question why the room looked like a cattle slaughterhouse. Apparently not, though. Even as he looked on through the wall, the first alien to reach the Gate controls started desperately tapping at them, twisting runes to align the Gate with the Webway.<br>
Jaghatai waited until the last few slaves had been herded into the room before hefting a flashbang and preparing to open, just as he had the last several times. Before he could use it, however, another contact entered the room.<br>
The human mercenary leader stumbled across the threshold, staggering towards the Gate. “Stop!” he yelled, pain clenching his throat. “Stop, you idiots! Look! Look at the bodies! They’re all facing the hatches!” He gestured at the mounds of corpses, and indeed, the bodies were all arranged towards the doors, which concealed the Marines beyond.<br>
Jaghatai didn’t wait. He tapped the button on his vox that served as the Go signal, and kicked the hatch open, already firing with his bolter.
The nearest few aliens went under like wheat under a rocket-propelled scythe, collapsing and jerking as explosions tore them asunder. The next few ranks, however, had had time to process the warning, and dove for cover amongst the dead and dying on the ground. Jaghatai stepped into the chamber and took a knee, switching his bolter to full-auto.

The other hatches opened, and the Astartes poured in, hosing down the enemy with bolters and fire. In the thick of the fighting, there would be no question of sparing the slaves. They had been exposed to Dark Eldar tortures, they were beyond salvation as it was. Regrettable, but unavoidable.<br>
The mercenary leader slung his shotgun and scrambled for the Webway Gate controls, desperately trying to open it. The other mercenaries and Eldar were dropping in droves, caught in the crossfire of bolts that had ripped every previous wave apart.<br>
This time, though, they had numbers on their side. The two Scars following Jaghatai into the room collapsed backwards as a Mandrake Hunter managed to slip behind them, slicing their backs open with his blades. Jaghatai pivoted at the waist and blasted the Mandrake with his bolter, but it was too late, the distraction was all the Dark Eldar had needed. One of them managed to reach the controls, shoving the human aside with contempt, and pressed his palm against the machine, activating it.<br>
Or trying to. Vect’s lockout remained in place. The Gate did not open. The Eldar stared at the machine, trying to comprehend his failure, when a bolt caught him in the spine, blasting him apart at the seams. The explosion knocked the human merc leader to the ground, knocking him out cold.<br>
The last few aliens standing died under the relentless Minotaur and Scar barrage, their blood mixing colors and sluicing towards a drain in the floor. A Minotaur Apothecary tended to the few Space Marine casualties, while Jaghatai hauled the human mercenary leader up by his collar.

“Wake up, mercenary scum,” he snarled, shaking the injured mercenary. The man stirred, and his hands immediately shot to his throat, as Jaghatai held him at arm’s length. “What are you and the other humans doing here?”<br>
“I’ll say nothing, Marine,” the man snarled through a split lip. “I choose my own destiny.”<br>
“Crock of shit,” Jaghatai said, shaking him again. “You’re trapped on a space station, serving xenos. A waste of human genes.”<br>
“As opposed to you, who allowed some corpse’s servants to twist yours into ribbons?” the man shot back. “I’m more human that you’ll ever be!”<br>
Jaghatai let an oily smile sneak across his face. “I am Jaghatai Khan, Lord Primarch of the White Scars, you detestable worm. And believe me, when I’m done with you, human is all you’ll wish I was. I was trapped in the Webway for ten thousand years, with nothing to think about except how much I HATE the Dark Eldar.” He paused, raising the struggling mercenary over his head. “Their souls travel, even now, to Slaanesh, to suffer for eternity. Give it a few days, and you’ll wish you’d joined them.”

Mere hours later, Jaghatai voxed the fleet captain with the news. “Fleet command, this is Sierra Lead, the station is ours,” he reported, looking down at the sobbing wreck of his mercenary captive. “And it seems the Webway Gate is now inoperable. We’d need specialists to get it going again.”<br>
“The external Gate is also offline, Lord,” the fleet captain reported, looking over the sensor panel before him. “What shall we do with the captured Eldar ships?”<br>
“Call in a freighter and have it all hauled off to Bismarkine, or some other local shipyard,” the Primarch said, “we may as well salvage them for scrap.”<br>
“Aye. And your prisoners?”<br>
Jaghatai stared pointedly at the mercenary. “There’s none worth the shipping cost.”<br>
“Aye. Well done, my Lord. Fleet out.” Jaghatai cut the vox and stared at the mercenary, smirking. “Well. You know…I could change that order. Make room for one passenger. What say you?”<br>
The mercenary’s sobs of agony and shame quieted for a moment. “…the terminal…uses biometrics…the Gate, they’re paranoid…”

“The haemonculi can bring back fallen leaders of the Dark Eldar,” Jaghatai pointed out, tapping his armored finger on the table of the impromptu interrogation room, which was nothing more than a storage chamber. “Cloning would render the process insecure.”<br>
“…it works…they don’t, they can’t even…understand their own technology…” the merc managed past his injuries.<br>
Jaghatai shrugged. “Works for me.” He lifted his armored fist and slammed it down on the merc, crushing his head to a pulp in an instant. He tapped in the inside of the door, alerting the men beyond of the interrogation’s abrupt conclusion.<br>
“Have the Techmarines rip the information from the Gate control computers,” Jaghatai said, brushing gore off his gauntlet. “The data inside should let us open still-active Gates elsewhere.”<br>
“As you command, my Lord,” one of the Marines responded. “The drill has been salvaged, and is stowed aboard the Scourge of the Heretic. Shall we withdraw after the gate computers’ data are retrieved?”<br>
“No, we’ll stick around for a while, in case the Emperor needs to reach us,” Jaghatai said, closing the door behind him. “And I suspect he will. We have a lot of work ahead of us.”

At nearly the same time, the Emperor himself was having his patience tested. “I assure you, Omnissiah, I would never have allowed it if I had known it would fail,” the Fabricator-General said nervously.<br>
“OF COURSE NOT! BUT IT DID. SO NOW WHAT? THE GOLDEN THRONE MAY TAKE FULLY SEVEN WHOLE YEARS TO FIX NOW!” the Emperor exasperatedly roared. “THIS WILL DELAY MY PLANS CONSIDERABLY.”<br>
“I beg your forgiveness, Omnissiah,” the Fabricator-General said, inclining his waist joint. “The test was successful, at least.”<br>
“AND I’M SURE THAT TESTING TO SEE IF THE COMPONENTS OF THE MOST COMPLEX COMPUTER EVER DESIGNED COULD WITHSTAND THE PRESENCE OF WEBWAY SHARDS SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME,” the Emperor sighed, dropping it for the time being. “ALL RIGHT. FINE. REPAIR IT. IN THE MEANTIME, SIR, HOW GO THE PREPARATIONS FOR PHASE TWO?” he asked, turning his attention to the Master of Assassins.<br>
“We have managed to assembled Assets E1 through E128 as per your instructions, my Lord God…but I must register my objection. It seems somewhat…profligate to throw so many assassins at a single target,” the Master said carefully.<br>
“SURE DOES. AND BELIEVE ME, I WOULDN’T EVEN CONSIDER IT AGAINST ANY OTHER TARGET. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN WASTEFUL. BUT UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES…I TRULY DON’T SEE AN ALTERNATIVE. WE HAVE TO BLUNT ANY POSSIBLE REPRISAL FROM THE FORCES OF CHAOS HERE, AND THAT’S WHAT ASSASSINS DO BEST,” the Emperor said.<br>
“Very well, my Lord God. My men are yours,” the Master said, setting the plan the Emperor had created over a month ago in motion.


''Continues in [[The Tales of the Emperasque: Part Sixteen]]''.

[[Category:The Tales of the Emperasque]]