Table of Contents

Cover

The Arkunasha War – Extract

Legal

eBook license

The Arkunasha War

Andy Chambers

Cymbals and drums sounded tinny and distant in the thin, cold air as they welcomed him to the new world. Looking down from the top of the ramp, the shuttle’s only passenger seemed surprised to find any kind of welcoming committee, even one as small and dispirited as this one, awaiting him. High overhead, twin suns lit the scene with a fierce glare but little warmth; what little heat there was to be had was being ripped away by a chilling breeze filled with fine, irritating dust. Gentle ripples of rust-red sand marked the edge of the landing pad and marched off towards the foreshortened horizon with monotonous discipline. A small collection of domes, blocks and stubby towers in the mid-distance constituted the apparent entirety of Arkunasha’s one and only colony, the handful of off-white shapes looking lonely and isolated on the too-wide canvas of an empty world.

The newcomer was tall and broad-shouldered, and showed scarification, unusual in a society with the capacity to heal any such blemish at will. A warrior, clearly, past his first flush of youth but still vital. There was a penetrating look to his dark eyes as he squinted through the glare and stinging dust at the welcoming party, wishing he had accepted a filter plug for his nasal slit when the shuttle pilot had offered him one. He beheld the tall, serene-looking profile of the colony leader and the squat shape of the chief engineer among a handful of others at the bottom of the ramp. One of the cymbal players, a wiry-looking fellow with blue facial markings, broke away from the small crowd and hurried upwards.

‘Please to be meeting with the exalted prince, great warrior, I, unworthy associate, will conduct you hence if willing?’

‘Of course, I…’ But the low ranking associate was already backing away and gesturing as if to draw the warrior forward on invisible strings. The bemused warrior followed him, his armoured toe-hooves clacking down the ramp and onto the first true ground he’d touched in weeks of travel.

‘To make introductions,’ the associate said, gesturing to the broad-shouldered warrior and the colony leader in turn. ‘This great warrior is Shas’o Vior’la Kais Mont’yr. This exalted prince is Aun’o T’au Vasoy Ty’asla.’

The warrior knelt before the stately aun’o and bowed his head before rising and addressing him.

‘Aun’o, I am flattered that you came to meet me but I would not have discomforted you so.’

The aun’o’s face was thin and high boned, virtually a T-shape with a narrow slit of a mouth at the bottom that radiated faint but constant disapproval. The aun’o’s mark of celestial devotion gleamed from the top of his nasal slit like a third eye. When he spoke his voice seemed dull and flat, a disinterested burr.

‘Nonsense, shas’o, it was only seeming for me to be present in order to make acquaintance and welcome you to Arkunasha at the first moment of your arrival.’

The associate cleared his throat and rattled his cymbals quietly before speaking again.

‘Also, great and exalted ones, here is honoured trustee fio’ui Ke’lshan.’ The portly engineer nodded stiffly to the warrior, who saluted him in return.

‘We shall have much to discuss, fio’ui,’ the warrior said politely, ‘and I hope we can work closely together for the protection of the colony.’

The flat-faced engineer gave a non-committal grunt at the prospect, eliciting the shadow of a frown on the warrior’s face. The associate smoothly broke into the moment of silence that followed.

‘Please to be moving to the concourse area where refreshments are now being served.’ Taking their cue the drums and cymbals rattled again as the water caste members began leading the way towards a torus–shaped structure nearby. The warrior refused to be immediately drawn after them, addressing a question to the associate.

‘And where are the warriors I am to command? I am surprised to find that they have left greetings, welcome as they are, to others, while absenting themselves.’

The aun’o answered directly, cutting across the associate’s platitudes even as they began.

‘The shas’la are sulking in their barracks after being refused permission to bring weapons along to a greeting. They declared that they would rather go naked than suffer the shame of being disarmed at the first encounter with their shas’o! This, on a world completely empty of any other living beings save for ourselves. Just whom do they propose to shoot, I wonder?’ The aun’o tittered briefly at the thought, before subsiding into an indulgent clucking. The frown returned to the shas’o’s face and remained there.

‘What’s that supposed to be?’

‘It’s a world, boss, the mekboss wants to go there.’

Ork Warboss Gorbag Gitbiter leaned forward, peering down at the wiry little gretchin before his throne. The gretchin quaked, the big shard of glass in its hands quivering and making the dirty yellow-brown ball on its surface bounce around uncertainly.

‘The mekboss, eh?’ Gorbag rumbled with a voice like stones tumbling down a shaft. ‘Well, I’m the warboss and I say where we go!’

The gretchin rocked back on its heels at the blast of sound and spittle flying from the impressively tusked jaws of the hulking warboss. It desperately wanted to chuck away the viewing glass and run off behind a console or into a duct, but it was smart enough not to try. The complex symbiotic relationship between the warlike orks and their smaller, weaker gretchin cousins has long depended on the quick wits and diplomacy of the latter. Thousands of years of genetic heritage conspired to keep the gretchin’s mind focussed enough to squeal out the words that might save it.

‘The mekboss said the ships are gonna break if we don’t go!’

The warboss paused at that. Glaring red eyes pierced the quivering gretchin with new interest.

‘What… did you just say?’

The gretchin’s healthy green pallor had gained a distinctly whitish cast, the world in the viewing glass oscillated tightly back and forth in its grip.

‘The mekboss said to tell you we got too many holes. Some are so big the boys are falling out and all the... the breathy stuff is leakin’ out.’

Gorbag thrust his mighty jaw out truculently. ‘Breathy stuff? You mean the air, you stupid little grot?’

‘Yes, boss!’

‘So we’re gonna be stuck there?’ Gorbag’s three-metre tall form seemed to sag at the prospect. No more reaving across the stars for him and his bloodthirsty crew of freebooters; they would be stuck on one stinking planet with no way off it and nothing to fight but each other.

‘No, boss! The mekboss says there’s metal on this world. We can fix all the holes an’ keep goin’!’

Gorbag seemed to swell up visibly at the prospect. He grabbed the viewing glass from the gretchin with a gnarled claw as big as its torso and glared at it with a rapacious gleam in his eyes. The gretchin failed to relinquish its grip quickly enough and ended up dangling from Gorbag’s fist by one arm.

‘Anything to kill?’ Gorbag demanded.

‘No, boss,’ the grot squeaked apologetically, ‘leastways nothing good.’

Click here to buy The Arkunasha War.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Hammer and Bolter Issue 9 (2011).
This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

The Arkunasha War © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. The Arkunasha War, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-308-7

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.