Chapta 20

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 Da Raiders From Da Shadows

Prologue

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Two Heads strode through the melee; swing his axe at anything that wasn’t green. His two heads gave him excellent peripheral vision. At any time one head could focus on a particular opponent while the other one watched for signs of trouble elsewhere. Thus when Klaivex Illurim wove his way through the fighting towards him Two Heads was not taken by surprise as the incubi leader had hoped.

Grabbing hold of the nearest incubi, Two Heads dragged the alien between himself and Illurim. Pulled off balance, the incubi flailed about momentarily before the Goff he had been fighting drove his blade under the eldar’s chest plate. Without waiting for the ork to withdraw his blade, Two Heads hurled the corpse at Illurim.

The klaivex dodged the thrown corpse, diving aside at the last moment. But when he tried to stand he found that he could not lift his sword. Looking at the blade he saw that there was a large boot placed on top of it.

“Gotcha!” One of Two Heads said as he lifted up Illurim by the scruff of his neck. The eldar lashed out and jabbed a finger into one of Two Heads eyes. The injured head roared with pain, but the second one just snarled and opened its mouth wide. Pulling Illurim closer Two Heads bit down on his neck and he tasted the strange taste of eldar blood in his mouth.

“Stop ‘oggin’!” the other head snapped as it blinked the poked eye just to make sure it was still there, then the second head bit down on the other side of Illurim’s neck. Illurim tried to scream, but with his throat ripped open and blood now pouring into his lungs all he could manage was a gurgle before everything went black forever.

Spitting out two mouthfuls of blood and flesh, Two Heads dropped the body to the ground.

 

Hazug saw the aliens turn towards Sophie and knew that he had to do something. He had suspected that the alien leader would try something like this and had hoped that Gorgoga and Two Heads would prevent it. Looking around and saw where he had dropped his warscythe and barged through eldar and ork alike to reach it.
”Batrug!” he bellowed as he picked up the weapon and removed the exhausted power pack.
”Wot!” the mekboy shouted back from somewhere.

“Gather da burnas! We is goin’ after dare warboss!” then Hazug slammed a new power pack into the warscythe and also ran towards Sophie, hoping that he would get to her first.

 

Firing on fully automatic had drained the power pack of Sophie’s lasgun and she fumbled for another one. But as she desperately tried to reload her weapon she saw that the three surviving aliens had changed direction and where now coming directly towards her. From behind her she could still hear the sound of the baby crying and she came to the conclusion that she had to try and save it from the approaching aliens. Leaving the lasgun on the ground where she was, Sophie got up and ran to the baby’s basket. She scooped it up and began to run as fast as she could away from the aliens.

Continuously looking over her shoulder at her pursuers, Sophie was not paying proper attention to where she was going and she suddenly felt her foot give way beneath her as she put it in a hole dug by some burrowing creature. Screaming, she fell to the ground still clutching the basket.

She looked at her ankle. There was no blood, but the pain was intense and she knew that whatever she was going to do now she would have to do here. She could go no further. Taking hold of her autopistol, Sophie extended its stock and chambered a round. Then she pointed it back towards the aliens coming towards her and fired.

 

Lord Shraycht saw Sophie fall and he knew that soon he would have his revenge for his lost medusae and its precious store of memories. He felt the pain of Sophie’s injury and with it the fear emanating from both her and a second human nearby, an infant.

There was the rattle of gunfire and several projectiles flattened themselves out against the archon’s shadow field. Beside him his sslyth bodyguard hissed as more rounds hit him but failed to penetrate his thick, scaly skin. The snake-like alien raised his carbine and took aim, but Lord Shraycht intervened.

“No!” he snapped, “The mon keigh is mine. You two will wait here.”

With a flick of his wrist, barbed talons extended from Lord Shraycht’s gauntlet and he advanced on Sophie, the blades grinding against one another as he flexed his fingers.

In front of him he saw Sophie fumbling with her weapon as she desperately tried to change magazines. Then there was another burst of fire as Sophie discharged the entire magazine at him. The recoil off the weapon meant that most of the shots missed Lord Shraycht entirely, while those that found their mark were blocked by his shadow field and dropped harmlessly at his feet. In replied the archon just snarled.

“You are mine mon keigh.” He then hissed, “You will pay for what you have cost me. I will inflict on you every torture that my medusae held the memory of.”

From Sophie’s point of view the archon was nothing but a shadowy blur behind his protective energy field, but she heard his words as they were translated. She tried to stand, but eh pain in her ankle caused her to fall again and instead she began to crawl away from the eldar.

A loud shrieking sound caused both Lord Shraycht and Sophie to look around. No living thing had created that sound, but the laughter that followed could come only from orks. The shriek had been the discharge of a flamethrower. The sslyth bodyguard had been just out of range of the ork burnas’ weapons but the lhamaean had borne the full force of their attack, her brief dying howl going unnoticed compared to the sound of the flamethrowers themselves.

“We got da snake!” Mek Batrug shouted as he led the burnas onwards towards the sslyth, firing his pistol as he ran. Without replying, Hazug broke away from the group and instead ran towards Lord Shraycht.

“You’ll keep.” The archon said to Sophie and he turned to engage Hazug instead.

Hazug towered over Lord Shraycht, the ork nob was both taller and more heavily built than the dark eldar but Lord Shraycht did not flinch from this fight. He let Hazug charge at him and sidestepped, causing Hazug to stumble. Then he swung his talon at the ork.

Hazug reacted quicker than Lord Shraycht had expected and he raised his warscythe at the last minute to block the blow. The eldar thought nothing of this at first, trusting in his shadow field to protect him. Then he noticed the design of the weapon.

Like the precursors to the orks, the eldar had fought the necrons and their gods in ancient times. But unlike the greenskin races the eldar retained detailed knowledge of this war. So when he saw the warscythe, Lord Shraycht knew what it was capable of.

Lord Shraycht tried to abort his attack, but Hazug continued to swing his weapon and when its blade reached the outer edge of the shadow field it continued on its way as if the energy shield was nothing more than a cloud of smoke.

Lord Shraycht screamed and clutched at the stump of his hand. Hazug’s blow had cleaved through the archon’s wrist and sent both his bladed gauntlet and the hand that bore it tumbling to the ground. Detecting the sudden change in his biorhythms, the drug dispenser built into Lord Shraycht’s ornate armour flooded his blood stream with stimulants, painkillers and serums intended to stem the flow of blood. Then Lord Shraycht did the only thing he thought was left for him to do. He ran.

Weaving past Hazug, Lord Shraycht headed for where he had left his bodyguards. Though he knew the lhamaean to be dead he had faith that the sslyth could still protect him adequately. But he soon saw that this faith was misplaced.

The ork burnas still wielded their flame-throwing weapons, but each of them had shut off the supply of liquid from the massive tanks on their backs and instead held them as they might hold a spear. But were a spear would have a tip of metal or stone these spears were tipped with a white hot gas flame typically used to ignite the flammable liquid kept in the tanks.

The sslyth did not cry out even as lumps of its flesh were cut from its body by the flames. Using all four arms the alien lashed out at its attackers, sending one of the burnas stumbling back clutching at his throat as it was ripped open.

It was Mek Batrug that ended the fight. While the sslyth was distracted by the apparently greater threat of the blowtorch weapons carried by the burnas the mekboy dropped the magazine from his pistol and plucked another from his belt. It was marked with a crude image of a burning skull.

“Bin savin’ dis for somethin’ special.” The mek said to himself, “Reckon dis snakey thingy is special enough.” And he slammed the magazine into his weapon and chambered the first round, “Oi! Slimey!” he bellowed, “Gonna make boots outta ya!” and he rammed the pistol into the sslyth’s mouth and fired.

The sslyth’s head jerked back as the bullet lodged in the roof of his mouth.

“Stand back lads!” Mek Batrug shouted as the disorientated sslyth swayed. Then the chemicals inside the bullet now lodged inside the sslyth mixed and ignited violently. There was a dull ‘thump’ and the alien’s head exploded, splattering he nearby orks with blood and bone fragments.

Seeing the death of his last bodyguard and knowing that Hazug was close behind him, Lord Shraycht knew that the fight was lost.

“Mandrakes! Now!” he hissed and the air around him grew cold.

As he charged towards Lord Shraycht leader Hazug saw him come to a sudden halt. Expecting the eldar to draw a weapon Hazug prepared to dodge, but what he saw next was not what he had expected. From the shadow cast by Lord Shraycht something crawled its way into the world. Then suddenly the air around Hazug grew cold also and something grabbed hold of Hazug’s ankle. Unable to keep his balance, Hazug fell.

Whatever had brought Hazug down still had hold of him and looked to see what it was. There he saw another of the creatures that had appeared next to Lord Shraycht crawling form his own shadow. Hazug lashed out with his free foot, kicking the creature repeatedly in what for want of a better word Hazug too to be its face. But though each impact did make the creature pause it left not a single mark on its peculiar flesh. But Hazug had seen a creature that seemed impervious to attack before when the servants of the former human ruler of the world had summoned it to take possession of the human’s body. Hazug had not only fought the creature, he had killed it. So he had a good idea how to kill this thing.

“Kop dis.” Hazug said and he swung his warscythe.

The ancient weapon sliced through the mandrake’s flesh and neatly cut its head from its shoulders. A second mandrake began to pull its way out of Hazug’s shadow and just as its shoulders fully emerged he brought the warscythe crashing down and split the alien’s head down the middle. The mandrake slumped forwards, now just an oddly shaped lump of flesh as whatever remained of it failed to enter the real world.

Two more mandrakes emerged from Lord Shraycht’s shadow and blocked Hazug’s way to the archon.

“Raider,” Lord Shraycht signalled, “I need extraction. Now!” then he reset his communicator for a general broadcast and uttered a single word, “Disengage.”

Hazug ran towards Lord Shraycht and the trio of mandrakes standing between them. He planned to simply smash his way through the mandrakes, perhaps impaling one as he passed. But he did not intend to let them distract him form his primary target, Lord Shraycht himself.

“No!” Hazug cried out in rage as he saw the last remaining eldar transport swoop down just long enough for the wounded archon to be pulled aboard by its crew then rise up into the air once more. With the archon safe, the surviving mandrakes also left the field of battle, sinking down into the same ground they had sprung from.

“Worthless cowardly runts!” Hazug shouted as he looked around and saw that everywhere the eldar were running away from the fight.

The reaction of the orks to this unexpected manoeuvre was varied, some stood their ground and hurled abuse at the dark eldar as they withdrew while others broke away from the ork line and gave chase. Of these some either gave up their pursuit or caught one or two eldar before returning to the ork force waving some severed body part as a trophy, however some of the orks continued their pursuit and did not return.

“Did ya see dat?” Hazug heard Drazzok call out and he saw the weirdboy approaching him, eldar blood covering the end of his staff and both his hands. Clearly he had not shirked his fair share of the fighting. As ever Thuggrim was close behind, still holding his rifle when most other orks had ditched their guns in favour of close combat weaponry. “Dey just ran off! Dat’s just like pansies dat is, dey never stays in one place long enough for ya to smack ‘em all. Gimme gits any day over pansies, dey knows ‘ow to take a kickin’!”

Hazug looked all around. There were bodies everywhere. More than half appeared to be orks, but there were also a significant number of dark eldar lying dead on the ground. Hazug was not too bothered by the disparity in the numbers of casualties the warband had suffered when compared to the eldar. The aliens had brought vehicles with them that had made up for their lack of numbers. Additionally Hazug believed that, assuming there were not large eldar forces he had yet to see, he still had a larger force than they did.

Here and there were cries of pain from the wounded. The eldar weaponry did not always kill straight away and Hazug knew that the toll of ork dead was sure to increase. On the other hand the fleeing eldar had left some of their own wounded behind as well. Their cries were a death sentence; it led both orks and gretchin to them to finish them off. The lucky ones were found by orks that wound simply drive a blade into a vital organ, on the other hand the more mischievous gretchin would instead choose to inflict further minor wounds purely for the fun of it.

“Gather up da bosses.” Hazug said, “I wants to know wot we got left.”

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The Warhammer 40,000 universe is the intellectual property of Games Workshop Ltd. The fiction presented here is a derived work. It is completely unofficial and Games Workshop Ltd has not endorsed any of it.

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