Table of Contents

Cover

The Zheng Cipher – Extract

Legal

eBook license

THE ZHENG CIPHER

Josh Reynolds

The radium carbine bucked in Alpha 6-Friest’s hands as she pivoted and fired at the hormagaunt springing towards her out of the press of battle. The rad-bathed bullet punctured the alien’s skull, scorching the chitin black as it passed through and out the other side. She spun, carbine juddering as she fired again and again, trusting in her targeting sensors to send the bullets where the Omnissiah willed.

As she moved, her augmented limbs carrying her smoothly from one firing stance to the next, she took note of the disposition of her skitarii, calculated the efficiency of their current firing pattern, and found it wanting. 6-Friest stepped back, avoiding a scything talon, and smashed the butt of her carbine into the wailing hormagaunt’s fang-studded maw. The front of the alien’s skull crumpled and burst, spattering the front of her armour. Even as it fell, she was already seeking out new prey. The radium carbine slid through her fingers, spinning swiftly back into a firing position with a casual twitch of her wrists.

<Tighten up ranks.> She sent the thought pulsing out along the neural node-line that linked her combat-maniple. They responded with action rather than assent, tightening their formation, drawing together into a tight phalanx. Radium carbines hissed and barked, punching steaming holes in the heaving tide of alien chitin that sought to drown the cohort of skitarii vanguard attempting to pass through it.

<Watch your left, 10-Dulak,> she thought, sending a warning to one of her skitarii as something with too many limbs and claws rose up out of the press of lesser vermin and lunged for him with blades of bone and whips of stinging flesh. The rad-trooper whirled and fired, again and again, until the tyranid warrior staggered and sank down, its body shrivelling and steaming as the baleful energies ate away at its flesh. The radium carbines she and her skitarii carried were masterpieces of baroque beauty, each one older than its wielder by several generations. That beauty, however, belied a vile function – every shot bathed the immediate area in deadly radiation, rendering it as inhospitable as the rad-wastes of Mars itself.

Which was not to say that Kotir-8 was all that hospitable otherwise. The once harmlessly barren mining colony had been reduced to a xenos-infested wasteland, stripped of what little life it had possessed, its rocky gorges and snow-capped crags covered in a seething carpet of organic savagery. There had been two hundred and sixty-three extraction facilities on Kotir-8. Now there was one. Soon enough, there would be none. It was as inevitable as rust and ruin.

The facility in question rose above the seething horde. It was a hummock of metal and stone, built to withstand the worst environmental hazards the galaxy could throw at it, and to protect the extraction plant and its workers. Defence emplacements consisting of plasteel weapon blisters swivelled and rolled, spraying the forecourt of the facility with autocannon fire and cleansing flames. While the facility’s firepower was substantial, it barely slowed the frenzied mass of alien bodies that swarmed about its walls like an angry sea of chitin and ichor. Soon, those defences would fall silent, ammunition cylinders and fuel drums emptied, and the armoured doors would buckle and burst, as they had two hundred and sixty-two times before.

Click here to buy ‘The Zheng Cipher’.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS UK.

Cover illustration by Jon Cave.

The Zheng Cipher © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. The Zheng Cipher, Adeptus Mechanicus, 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: 978-1-78251-695-8

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.