Shades of Altansar: The Plan

In his free time, Second Lieutenant Lodz rehearsed The Speech. It focused his anger.

He liked to imagine how the staff sergeant would react to The Speech. How his brows would lift in slow comprehension, and shame would fill his eyes. The captain would finally understand that Lodz was a hero of the Imperium for putting up with as much shit as he did.

Any reasonable person could see Lodz was out of his depth. He knew how to handle the dregs that Civil Security dragged from the streets. Lodz could interrogate protest organizers and put the fear of the Throne into seditionists. What he could not do is extract information from an alien.

He barely knew how to keep the thing alive. The black site’s life support equipment was calibrated to human tolerances. The witchbreed withered in his care while he waited for strategium command to send him… anything. Sanctioned support, xenospecialists, anything more useful than acknowledgements and promises. Surely a few hive riots weren’t taking up the whole of the Patriot Guard’s attention.

Lodz couldn’t sleep. He suited up and walked down an access hallway to containment. The black site’s electric sconces flickered and buzzed with migraine intensity ever since they hauled in the alien. Machines broke down and old injuries flared up among site staff. Lodz knew, he absolutely knew the alien was responsible.

The witchbreed was awake, too. It waited for him. For the first few days of its captivity, the alien’s fuchsia eyes - a profane mirror of the noble violet eye color that marked most Cadian lineages - showed a withering contempt for Lodz and the other interrogators that transcended language. Now the alien flicked a lidded glance his way before looking away.

It was bored.

Second Lieutenant Lodz bit his lower lip in a spasm of anger. “You have no idea how bad things can get for you here, you freak. You have no idea.” He jabbed a square button on a machine at hip height and it hummed to life, breathing out heat. A half-dozen handles protruded from one side. In a few minutes its work would be done, and Lodz would pull one of those handles and reveal a barbed, red-hot prod.

“But you’re going to learn.” Lodz shook his head back and forth, aggression tightening his neck muscles. The smell of burning eyeballs was a hard thing to forget. He wondered what the witchbreed’s eyes would smell like.

He never got the chance to find out.

𝚿

“Found you,” seethed a voice from Pranamin’s war helm. She flinched from the barely restrained fury in the Autarch’s voice. She was glad he was not here to see that. She was also glad the Autarch could not see that Pranamin’s war helm was upside down, between her knees, being used as a container for food scraps.

“Oh. Oh! Thank goodness, the link is working again!” Pranamin spoke through a mouthful of food. “It must be the radiation. It is so good to hear your voice, nayaka.” When she spoke the last word, some of the Hellrunners looked in her direction. Others peered through the window of the cramped garret in which they hid, silhouetted by the dingy glow of streetlights below.

“You are a terrible liar, Pranamin.” The Autarch sounded as though he were among them. The Shades powered their comm links with wraithbone chits entangled together on a quantum level.

“And a terrible soldier, that’s the sad truth,” Pranamin said. “I am only a gardener, but you called me to war all the same. This is really your fault, when you think about it.”

“The Plan cannot fail. It can only be failed. You broke off from the host to slake your intemperate lust for battle. You will face discipline for endangering us.” Shirin Zar’s voice was magma flowing beneath polished obsidian.

“Oh, for certainly, yes, nayaka!” Pranamin said. “But do you maybe want to do that after we tell you where Yasna is?”

“What?”

“A moment.” Pranamin was sure the Autarch heard her chewing. She ate another of the fried morsels the Hellrunners had filched from a human foodseller. Pierogies, they were called. Far superior to algae paste from the craftworld.

She licked her fingers with obvious relish before continuing. “Yes, thank you for your patience. The savages have him locked away. My friends and I wish to free him, but this is subtle work, and our tools are not subtle. I would love it if you could help us free our revered Warlock, and then you can discipline us. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“Tell me where you are,” the Autarch demanded.

One of the window lookouts hushed Pranamin before she could respond, beckoning her over. She let her war helm fall to the floor, bits of cooked spinach and basil spilling from it. She followed the lookout’s gaze.

The Hellrunners saw the shape of two cyborged brutes in long coats approach the unassuming entrance of the black site. One of them looked away, holding a weapon that seethed with toxic, radiant energy. The other grasped the door with augmetic hands and tore it from its hinges.

“You had better come quick,” Pranamin told the Autarch. “I think we are out of time for subtle work.”

𝚿

Yasna’s retrieval cost the aeldari dearly. The Shades of Altansar did not begrudge the Warlock for the wounds dealt to them during the rescue. His knowledge and expertise were too sensitive to let fall into unsafe hands.

But the Shades wanted revenge. Shirin Zar understood this. He could not remain aloof to their anger, not after Machine Cult slugthrowers made a ruin of his right leg.

In a show of solidarity, the Autarch refused medical aid. His limb ended below the knee with a wooden peg strapped into place. He would not heal himself before he could heal the Shades’ wounded pride.

He stoked their anger. He made it part of the Plan. He knew the young lord’s wraithbone body could absorb the punishment of Human guns. He knew the Dirge Bells, the risen dead of the craftworld, could take whatever their foes gave them. Shirin Zar’s desire for victory at any cost had served the craftworld well when it clawed itself free from the Warp. It was not for nothing that his kin called him the Bloody Crow of Altansar.

For as long as he had walked the Path of Command, Shirin Zar had never known doubt. Not until the Imperial assassin shattered him.

The thing moved like a daemon. He saw Yasna fall first, dropped by a single shot to the neck from a long-barreled rifle. The assassin fought with clinical efficiency. It dodged killing shots from his fusion pistol. It blocked his blade, catching it with bare hands before cracking Shirin Zar’s ribs with a vicious kick. The autarch tried to flee. The assassin followed him, disabled him with strikes to nerve clusters that revealed a frightening knowledge of aeldari anatomy. Somehow, the assassin found the time to kill more of Shirin Zar’s kin.

Only as he lay on the ground, staring down the barrel of his executioner’s pistol, did Shirin Zar begin to realize that he could fail the Plan, too.

Then the assassin jerked backwards, blood spraying from its body as a Vyper jetbike riddled the Imperial death-dealer with monomolecular shuriken fire.

It fled. The damned thing fled, held upright despite its mortal wounds by some unholy admixture of conditioning and combat drugs. The Vyper harrowed the assassin with heavy shuriken fire and plasma warheads until it vanished behind a tree line. Somehow, Shirin Zar was still alive.

The Autarch heard the Vyper gunner dismount. He knew the conscript gunner by the sound of his footfalls. Zaotar was his name. His brother Zaolat directed the guns of Monody, which still burned not far away.

Zaotar tore away his helm, revealing an ash-grey face, bared teeth, and hate-filled magenta eyes. It was clear that war called to the conscript this day, Shirin Zar thought through the pain of his injuries. He-

Zaotar kicked the Autarch between the legs.

Shirin Zar grunted. His groin was as well-armored as the rest of his warsuit. But the kick jolted the Autarch’s supine body and wracked him with fresh agony from his other injuries.

“Your fault!” Zaotar screamed. “Your fault, you waste!”

Shirin Zar opened his mouth to retort, when the conscript kicked him where his ribs had broken. The Autarch shrieked in pain. The other Shades, falling back to their stricken leaders, turned to see.

“You bleed us white, after we have come so far!” Zaotar stabbed a finger in the direction of the Dirge Bells, slumped and motionless near the wreckage of the wraithlord Dakhma. “Those are our ancestors and our children, and you use them as battering rams!”

Zaotar pulled off the war leader’s helm. Shirin Zar’s bare face showed dignified remorse. His eyes, the color of kunzite, were oceans of contrition.

Zaotar headbutted the Autarch. Shirin Zar’s nose cracked and bright blood spurted from the aeldari’s nose. The Vyper gunner raised a fist to strike again, when he heard a shout.

“Enough!”

A ragged line of conscripts approached. Their weapon platform hovered at their side, following them like a loyal pet.

“We aren’t safe here. We need to withdraw.” Zaotar knew the Omen Dogs well. They broke formation, rushing to stabilize the wounds of the seers the assassin had cut down.

“Ban,” Zaotar said, recognizing the speaker. He let the Autarch fall to the ground. The Bloody Crow lived up to his name.

Arteban nodded in return. “Mount up. Cover our retreat,” the Omen Dog said. "And once we’re in the clear? Everyone gets one, Zaotar.”

The Guardian pointed to the broken Autarch, then cracked his knuckles.

“Everyone gets one.”