Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint (Warhammer 40,000) by Matthew Farrer

Author:Matthew Farrer [Farrer, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2021-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

Priad

Astra Militarum Command, Ghereppan City

‘Another lekt dead, I understand?’ came the voice through the swirling shoal of holotank runes. ‘Good. Good show. Another one for the tally.’

‘You’re speaking of Platonos Squad, not my own Damocles,’ Priad answered as politely as he could, in the voice’s general direction. Below and behind him he could hear the bustle and chatter of the rest of the command post start to pick up again, after the bow-wave of silence that had spread in front of him when he had first come through the far doors. Even now, most of the humans behind him were speaking in whispers.

Something was nagging at him, and he realised with an internal wince what it was. ‘My own Damocles’, he had said. That was unbecoming. He was a brother-captain now. Every Iron Snakes squad on Urdesh was his equally. He had to be careful of that.

‘It was Platonos who took the task of breaking the lekts’ operating structure,’ he went on, ‘while the rest of our strength came across the straits. Epistolary Hamiskora has done fine work in divining new tracks and targets from each of his kills.’

‘Good. Very good. I second your commendation of your man. I’ll ensure it’s recorded.’ The voice was moving behind a burst of yellow icons about two-thirds up the tank’s height. Priad spent a moment taking them in. The Adrantine Coradna, an Imperial Navy ship, a light one, a variant destroyer class he wasn’t immediately familiar with. It had been careless with a low-orbital surveillance pass over the Ghereppan promontory, drifting too far north into range of Oureppan’s potent space-defence silos. The floating icons marked the superheated shockwaves in the upper atmosphere where lasers and mass drivers had smashed into the warship’s voids, and the aquamarine line arcing up from them was the trajectory along which the Coradna was making its frantic escape. By reflex, Priad’s eyes darted down to the land map underneath it but there was no falling debris, no ground engagement nearby. Nothing to affect any of the Iron Snakes. The fact neither bothered nor relieved him. He simply absorbed it, fitted it into his own mental battle-map and moved on.

‘Platonos’ most recent target was travelling with a convoy,’ he said in the voice’s direction. ‘Almost certainly he was not based in the settlement where my brothers found him. We caught them while they were making a stop. From what Hamiskora could discern after the kill, the lekt had been making his way to Oureppan.’

‘Does that strike you as odd?’ asked General Illin Grawe-Ash, finally coming around the tank and into view. She was built a lot like Mazho, powerful and nuggety, as broad at the hip as at the shoulder, with a thick neck and square hands. Astartes tended to be mostly indifferent to faces but their perceptions of body language and physique were amplified by their transformation and conditioning – reading body movements was invaluable in combat. The general’s build and mannerisms placed her as a widelander, the Urdeshi name for anyone who’d grown up on a landmass that couldn’t be driven across in a day.

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