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Void Crossed – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Void Crossed

J C Stearns

Archon Melandyr strode across the battlefield, kicking a severed arm from his path. There were many among the drukhari who disdained setting foot on the ground. Xevrik Tayne, the haemonculus who had been paid to accompany him, went into battle borne aloft by microthrusters, hovering an arm’s length above the ground like a malevolent spectre. He was far from the only one; Melandyr had frequently collaborated with the hekatarii of the Scarring Barb, who waged war almost exclusively from jetbikes and skyboards. Even the Harlequins he occasionally worked with belonged to the Soaring Spite, who took pride in leaping through the battlefield in an endless series of acrobatics, feet rarely touching the ground.

Not so for Archon Melandyr, lord of the Emerald Talon. For him, grinding his boots into the dirt of yet another world was a mark of pride. What was another spatter of blood or gore across his armour compared to the very flesh of a planet itself? Each boot print was a scar upon another celestial body, marking his conquests, his mud-streaked greaves a testament to the injuries he’d brought upon the very earth.

The world of Dunwiddian already had its share of scars, of course. The few aeldari outcasts who had lived there guarding the ancient Dunwiddian Gate had been no match for the mon-keigh colonists who had come to wrest it from them. The departing rangers had felt no need to warn the Imperium of the ork raids in the sector, however, and the humans had spent centuries combatting the greenskin pirates. When the humans were finally overrun, the orks had stripped their colonies for whatever they could scavenge, then turned to warring with themselves. Finally they had departed, leaving the planet alone. With the Dunwiddian Gate unguarded for the first time in years, the aeldari had come to reclaim their prize.

Across the expanse of the Plains of Isha’nne, knots of craftworld Guardians exchanged volleys of fire with kabalite warriors. Grav-tanks and Raiders zoomed across the battlefield, perilously low to the ground, as graceful fighter craft dominated the skies, trading missiles and lances of energy with one another.

Once again, Dunwiddian had become a warzone. Melandyr’s interests largely lay in other sectors, and he’d initially had no interest in the webway gate, but when he had heard that the craftworld of Tir-Val had dispatched forces to claim it, he had seized the right to lead the drukhari in opposition.

Archon Melandyr spied a group of kabalites in the glossy black of the Emerald Talon, their armour edged in fluorescent green, routed from their position and fleeing from a huge wraith construct. The wraithlord swung its sword, cleaving a dracon in twain, and unleashed a gout of flame from a wrist-mount. The long limbs of the deadwalker were the same purple hue as the armour of the Guardians, the dark purple of a livid bruise, trimmed in golden yellow. The banner that hung from its back proclaimed the spirit within as Venzaynthe of House Cruiran.

Pausing for a moment, the archon lifted his hand, signalling to the trio of Ravagers that drifted above him. The incubi who dogged his footsteps flanked him as Melandyr indicated the rampaging wraithlord. The Ravagers, crewed by bloodthirsty gunners he had selected personally, were the second portion of Melandyr’s personal guard. Their dark lances allowed him to extend his reach across entire battlefields, and they protected him from above as his incubi protected him from threats below.

There was a colossal whine as the Ravagers fired in unison. Nine beams of concentrated dark matter particles lanced across the battlefield, transfixing the awesome form of Venzaynthe. The undead scion of House Cruiran vanished, his wraithbone shell blown apart in an instant, vaporised by the potent celestial forces employed against him.

Archon Melandyr howled in laughter as the drukhari rallied, charging over the smoking remnants where Venzaynthe had stood. He took off again, racing deeper into the fray. There had been battle lines when the bloodshed had begun, but they had long since dissolved. For the aeldari, they meant very little anyway. When their forces could redeploy at an instant in gravity-defying Wave Serpents and nimble Raiders, or soar over enemy entrenchments on wings wrought of psychoplastic or haemonculus fleshcraft, deployments soon became hopelessly enmeshed.

The grass had been trampled, the gentle slopes reduced to fields of muddy gore. Hundreds had been slain in the hours since the first shot had been fired, and hundreds more would die before one side yielded. Archon Melandyr had waited patiently for his quarry to appear, but he could wait no longer. He ran across the killing fields, seeking his victim. The Dark City might wish to see the gate reclaimed for their use, and his allies might have been enticed into battle by the promise of valuable craftworld playthings, but Melandyr had crossed the stars with an entire army at his side to kill but a single person.

Ciorstah was here. He just needed to find her.

The deck of the freighter was covered in scorch marks, the rounded beige walls marred by low-yield plasma rounds and studded with errant shuriken. The few remaining t’au cowered in terror, waiting for their captors to shackle them and take them away. Their defenders had been slain to the last, leaving the crew at the mercy of the Corsairs that had boarded. The aeldari pirates moved through the hold, inspecting the cargo and roughly handling their new prisoners.

Melandyr spied the woman he was looking for, and weaved his way around his fellow Corsairs, bearing down on her with the stealthy grace of a jungle predator. Springing from behind, he grabbed her by the waist and spun her in a giddy circle. Her helmet removed after the crew had surrendered, Ciorstah’s long black braids fanned out around her in a raven halo, and she laughed with him.

‘What’s the final tally, levressa?’ Melandyr asked, releasing her. Like him, she was clad in the orange armour of Prince Eidear’s Nova Blades. Like all the Corsairs in the hold of the t’au freightship, they each bore the red slashes across their shoulders, resembling feline claw marks, that marked them as part of the coterie of Jolanial the Twice-bladed.

Ciorstah wrapped one arm around Melandyr’s waist, drawing him close. She still smelled of baked earth and alkali salts: the scent of t’au blood. He still bore the tang of ionised air about him, from the engineering compartment he had cleared, battling the t’au crew hand to hand rather than risking weapons fire in the volatile environment.

‘We have yet to finish, my shoathé,’ she said, drawing close to his ear, ‘but we count two full keels of refined solinium. Wezdarciel also found over twenty trusses of gossamine stalk.’ He thrilled at the feel of her breath on his neck, but almost as thrilling was the value of their capture: rare commodities and valuable narcotics that could be traded at any port that would receive them.

‘How does it feel to have been so thoroughly vindicated?’ he asked. Lenfionne and Ardren had argued against attacking the t’au shipping lanes, but Ciorstah, with Melandyr’s aid, had persuaded, bullied and intimidated the barons into accepting Jolanial’s proposition, a plan their baron and prince both knew had originated with the two lovers.

‘It feels justified,’ Ciorstah said. Closing her eyes, she spread her arms and walked past him with the slow, stately stride of a regent on procession. ‘It feels like fate crowning us with the glory we’re due.’

‘Speaking of the crowning that we’re due,’ Melandyr said. ‘Jolanial’s coterie may have succeeded wildly, but Ardren’s people had a much harder time of it.’

‘Oh?’ Ciorstah turned her face to her lover, arching one delicate eyebrow quizzically.

‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘They were ambushed from behind and routed from the medical bay. They were put to such flight that Prince Eidear himself had to take the bay. Imagine his surprise when he found that an entire coterie had been sent running by nothing but a lone engineer and a flight of those drones the t’au are so fond of.’

‘Executed?’ Ciorstah’s eyes glittered with avarice. They had still not lost the translucent cerulean hue common in young aeldari adults. They would deepen to violet as she aged, but Melandyr loved them as they were, a living, moving reminder that the two of them had not yet been ground down as their elders had. His rounded cheeks, not yet hollowed to the sharpness of full adulthood, were a similar point of fascination for her.

Melandyr nodded. ‘Oh, immediately,’ he laughed. ‘And our dear prince has proclaimed he will give command of their coterie to another, so complete was their failure.’ He caught her hand and drew her closer, until their chests were touching and he was looking down into her eyes. ‘And who do you think he will give them to?’

‘We shall share them, of course.’ She put her palm to his cheek, her hand shaking with excitement. ‘What marking shall we have them bear to signify our leadership?’

Melandyr grinned. ‘What about the rune of the open hand, placed upon their chest?’

‘To show the heart you have taken from me?’ she whispered, pulling his face down to hers.

‘And you from me,’ he replied.

The Dire Avengers leapt from behind a wrecked Falcon, their shuriken catapults setting up a razor storm to impede his progress. Melandyr merely laughed. His incubi charged, covering the short distance to the Aspect Warriors before they could retreat.

The Shrine of the Severed Spine was one of his greatest achievements. Left leaderless and scattered after the humiliating defeat of Archon Xarat, the incubi shrine had been on the verge of extinction when Melandyr had offered them his patronage. With his wealth, he had brought them back from the brink of ruin, and now they served him above all others, their loyalty purchased in perpetuity. Haughty leaders that wouldn’t have spat upon the Severed Spine three decades ago now offered priceless treasures or holds full of slaves for the service of a single incubus.

In gunmetal-grey warsuits accented with blood red, the incubi were masters of their craft. Each of them wielded their two-handed klaives as deftly as though the broad-bladed weapons weighed less than a wych knife. The impact-ablating armour of the Dire Avengers, capable of shrugging off lasers or even explosive bolter shells, offered no more protection than a sheet of parchment. The incubi’s klaivex, the leader of their shrine, was a potent warrior named Throvein, whose bladed trophy vanes were festooned with silver service studs prised from the skulls of Adeptus Astartes officers, shattered spirit-stones and the tips of broken honour blades.

The Dire Avengers’ exarch commanded the warriors from the centre of their ranks, and it was he that Throvein was making his way towards. The two commanders met, power sabre to klaive, as the Dire Avengers found themselves unable to give ground fast enough to prevent the murderous attack of the incubi. The exarch was the master of a hundred battlefields, his life given in dedication to the close-range assault warfare his shrine exalted. His fixation allowed him a level of skill most living beings could scarcely conceive, much less aspire to. His very soul was blended with all those who had worn his armour before him, their skills and knowledge melded into the exarch’s own considerable repertoire. Throvein killed him in the space of six heartbeats. He deflected the exarch’s powerblade, hooked his klaive behind the Dire Avenger’s knees, and yanked him forward. Against a fellow incubus, or a heavily armoured Space Marine, the manoeuvre might have toppled the enemy to their back. Against this foe, the blade severed the exarch’s legs at the knee. His swing unarrested, Melandyr saw Throvein continue his stroke, arcing his blade up and over, chopping the craftworlder in half at the waist before his body had even hit the ground.

Not every engagement was proving as decisive.

‘Onzeisch reports heavy losses,’ a voice crackled in Melandyr’s ear. The energy discharges in the atmosphere were so intense that they were beginning to cause interference, even in the advanced aeldari communication systems.

‘This was anticipated,’ Melandyr replied. ‘The archite knew what she was getting herself into.’ He had great respect for the venerated Onzeisch, champion of the arenas and one-third of the ynnitach rulers of the Scarring Barb. The hellion gangs that followed her to war were an invaluable asset, but at the end of the day they were still little better than street scum. Onzeisch’s only forces of any real value were her personal attendants, a flight of Reavers who flew to war trailing immense garlands of heads taken from enemy commanders, and the archite would not fritter their lives away on petty targets.

‘She’s threatening to withdraw if she isn’t supported, lord.’

Melandyr considered for the briefest of moments. Onzeisch was a valuable ally, but she was deployed at the edge of the Plains of Isha’nne, where the Corennan River ran fat and slow, clogged with human and ork pollutants. That was far from the main knot of the battle, where the Tir-Val leadership had been spotted. He began looking for a Raider to signal. It appeared he would have to find Ciorstah another time.

Then he saw it: a flash of blue and violet amid a flood of palest green. He knew who it was, even without confirmation. His command runes showed a squad of kabalites near her position, and they winked out as he watched. He imagined he could hear the mournful wail even over the slicing of razor discs.

‘I will send my Ravagers to reinforce, but I myself cannot relocate,’ he said. He gestured for the Severed Spine to follow and set off at a sprint. ‘If the archite cannot fulfil her commitments, then she’s welcome to return to the Dark City.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Kevin Chin.

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