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The Jagged Edge – Maria Haskins

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Honourbound’

A Black Library Publication

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The Jagged Edge

by Maria Haskins

At midwinter, there is scant light and no warmth to be had in the Northern Reaches. The gleam of stars on snow might brighten the darkness to a gloom, but no more than a thin, bloody sliver of sun will cut through the horizon before it fades again beyond the white mountain peaks of the Jagged Edge.

That faint light is long since gone when Sergeant Aurelia Shale falls to her knees in the snow with the barrel of a bolt pistol pressed against the nape of her neck. It’s not the first time Aurelia has had a gun aimed at her head, but it is the first time the weapon has been wielded by her sister.

I don’t understand the reasoning behind this order, Theo.

As soon as the errant nickname slipped from her lips, Aurelia knew the blow would follow, and it did.

She grimaces at the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. Theodora always had a wicked right hook, even when they were kids, fighting other street rats for food or clout, and the ten years they’ve spent apart have not softened Theo’s knuckles nor diluted her righteous sense of purpose.

All fine qualities for a commissar.

‘Sergeant.’ Theo’s voice is as sharp and unforgiving as a shiv. ‘Henceforth, you will address me appropriately as Commissar Shale at all times. Understood?’

Aurelia knows what she must say. And yet the words are hard to speak. Other words, left unsaid for ten years, burn on her tongue, eager to be spoken. But Captain Bain is glaring at her, and behind him in the shadows lurk nine Scrappers of the Keplerian 23rd. Aurelia’s squad. Her family. Her life, such as it is. And, since her surprise promotion a month ago, her subordinates.

The four newbloods she can barely name yet, but five of the Scrappers – Thorne, Henryk, Steen, Daveed and Helvia – she’s served with long enough that they’ve all saved each other’s lives more times than she can count. All nine are waiting uneasily in the snow. Waiting for their sergeant to get off her knees.

Aurelia bites down hard on her anger, well aware that whatever authority she’s gained since her promotion could well be slipping away. She releases a ragged breath, the mist of it twisting like a wraith in the frosty air.

‘Understood, Commissar Shale,’ she says, clipping her voice to eradicate any hint of emotion it might accidentally contain.

The gun lingers for a moment before Theo lowers it.

‘Good,’ Captain Bain growls. His mouth is grim and set, the long scar running down his left cheek from eye to lip forever pulling his features into a scowl. ‘Now. You had something to say, sergeant?’

Aurelia looks at Bain, away from her sister.

‘What I meant to say when I misspoke, is that I do not understand why we cannot use vox in the tunnels. If we get separated…’

Bain shakes his head. ‘As the commissar explained, the range would be limited, and our transmissions might be detected. Stealth is of prime importance.’

‘Follow orders, sergeant,’ Theo says, ‘don’t waste time questioning them. Now get your unit ready.’

Aurelia inclines her head. ‘Yes, commissar.’

Thorne and Helvia have already moved to the mouth of the tunnel. Helvia sports her usual glower, blue eyes scanning the surroundings, while Thorne is busy, closing up his pack.

‘You’re supposed to be geared up, Guardsman Thorne.’

He flashes an apologetic smile. ‘Just making sure the detonators are secure, sergeant. Was worried they might’ve got wet when we crossed the river.’

‘Everything in order?’

Thorne shoulders his pack. ‘It is now, sergeant.’

Aurelia scoops up a handful of snow to ice her throbbing jaw. She’s known Helvia and Thorne since the day the three of them joined the Astra Militarum. A month after her promotion, it still sounds strange when they call her sergeant.

No stranger than calling your own sister commissar, though.

‘Never thought I’d be eager to head inside that mountain,’ Helvia grumbles, stamping her feet in the cold, ‘but standing in the open like this is making me twitchy.’

Aurelia nods. Since the grav-chute drop from the Valkyrie late last night she’s watched for sentries, scouts, patrols, any kind of enemy movement, but the landscape has remained silent and empty. And yet her unease has grown.

She looks around. They are standing near a partially ice-covered river at the bottom of a deep ravine, the ground strewn with snow-covered rocks. Beyond the river, the steep wall of the ravine plunges down from the plains beyond. Aurelia shivers. The long slog through the snow after the grav-chute drop was hard. Climbing down that frozen cliff like spiders on a wall, following a trail that was more like a vertical drop, was worse.

In front of them, a spur of the Jagged Edge mountain range juts into the ravine, like the pointed prow of an enormous starship, bending the river around it. Two hundred feet above the river, sprawled over the summit of that prow, looms the Manufactorum Primus, the largest weapons-making facility in the quadrant.

There is a dull, low-frequency throb in the air, the kind you feel in your bones rather than hear. It’s the sound of the machines inside the manufactorum, working ceaselessly, churning out the tools of war. The factory used to be the Imperium’s greatest asset on Kepler-Gamma, the perfect complement to the mines and smelters in the Northern Reaches. But since cultist infiltrators claimed the manufactorum in a brutal battle half a year ago, it has become an acute liability, threatening to tilt the balance of power not just on Kepler-Gamma, a planet ravaged by war since the insurrection fifteen years ago, but in the entire sector.

‘Listen up, Scrappers.’ Bain barely raises his voice, but every head turns towards him. ‘The traitors holding the manufactorum think they’re safe. They trust the forbidding terrain we already traversed to protect them from us, and until now, it has been enough. Because until now, no one has tried to infiltrate this place from below.’ A grin makes his craggy face look predatory and gleeful all at once. ‘Some of you might have preferred being part of a battle rather than a sabotage mission, and I don’t blame you. I’d prefer an army at my back. I’d like to march into this place across that steel bridge downriver, busting down the gates. But that’s what the enemy expects. Something big and loud, like Operation Hoarfrost last year.’ Bain looks up at the cliff. ‘We won’t linger on that failure. We’re here because we cannot spare the troops needed to retake this facility. We’re here because we cannot allow the enemy to keep it, either. We’re here because what the heretics don’t expect is sacrifice. That we’d be willing to set off an explosion that ignites the reactor core and blows this place to smithereens rather than try to recapture it.’

Gazing up at the manufactorum, Aurelia barely believes it either. The building looks as eternal as the mountains, and the thought that the explosives in their packs will be enough to bring it down seems laughable. And yet high command has ordered it, even sending them a commissar, and the legendary Captain Bain, to get the job done.

‘Think the story’s true?’ Thorne asks, in a hush, as the unit gets moving. ‘Did the captain really kill a Chaos Space Marine with his bare hands during the invasion?’

Helvia bares her teeth in something that is almost a smile. ‘I wouldn’t bet against him in a fight.’ She gives Aurelia a look. ‘Wouldn’t bet against Commissar Shale either, if it came to that.’

Aurelia pretends she’s not listening. Pretends, as she’s tried and failed to do for the last two days, that the presence of the new commissar does not bother her. She glances at Theo. In the gloom, the blue commissar uniform with its ornate gold trim, polished gold buttons and finely woven silver sash seems to glisten. Otherwise, Theo looks much the same as she did ten years ago: a taller, rangier version of Aurelia herself. Broad shoulders, green eyes, cheekbones sharp enough to cut your knuckles on, posture as steely-straight as always. Aurelia can almost hear Father’s voice in the cold: ‘Walk straight and tall, like the Emperor is watching.’

He’d be proud of Theo, she thinks, shrugging off the memories clinging to that thought: of Father, alive and dead; of him teaching Theo how to shoot while Aurelia was only ever allowed to watch; of him smiling as Theo’s hand closed around the weapon’s grip, as she cocked her eye and hit every mark set before her.

Father’s smile was always just for Theo. The good daughter. The good student. The good fighter. The commissar.

‘Get inside,’ she orders the unit, voice gruff, and the Scrappers file past, bowing low to enter the mountain.

‘Stay to the left when you head inside,’ Thorne cautions. ‘Loose rocks on the right. Don’t want anyone to slip.’

Aurelia ducks her head and steps into the dark, snapping on the new nightsense goggles they’ve been issued. Leaving the snow and night sky behind, she considers the immense structure of rock and darkness looming above them and has a sudden vision of the manufactorum as a beast crouched at the foot of the mountains, the tunnel its maw, devouring them.

From the cramped entrance chamber, several passages lead further into the rock. Aurelia has studied the maps. She knows the mountain is a warren of tunnels, carved by the river and miners before the factory was built. She knows only one path leads to the sub-chamber beneath the reactor core, and she has spent the last two days committing every twist and turn of that route to memory.

‘Don’t fire your weapons unless the need is dire,’ Captain Bain cautions, his voice a hollow echo beneath the rough-hewn vault of stone.

With Thorne beside her, and the squad following behind, Aurelia heads into the rock, the sting of Theo’s fist still lingering on her jaw. Ten years without a word, two days of her sister barely acknowledging her presence, and then a bolt pistol aimed at her head. Some family reunion.

‘Sergeant.’

Thorne’s voice holds a warning. Aurelia stops. She’s seen it too. A furtive movement stirring the heavy shadows ahead. She sniffs the air. It smells damp and vaguely rank, like a cellar where something has been left to rot. As she takes a step forward, a hulking shape heaves up from the tunnel floor. Thorne stumbles as something barrels into them, knocking Aurelia off her feet, scattering the unit. Henryk and Helvia go down hard, cursing as they fall, and Thorne is grappling with something big and heavy enough to shake the ground.

‘Hold your fire!’ Aurelia barks as she gets up, drawing the long knives from her belt.

Of all the equipment she was issued when she joined the Scrappers, the knives are what she prizes most. They are the finest blades she’s ever wielded, prime Keplerian alloy steel – the kind that keeps its edge and does not tarnish, sharp enough to slice you open before you even notice you’ve been cut – and she loves the weight and heft of the black hilts resting in her hands.

Even with the nightsense goggles, shadows and bodies bleed together in the muddled fight. Aurelia stabs at the first limb she finds, expecting a uniform or armour; instead there’s muscle and fur beneath her hand as the blade makes a glancing blow.

Fur.

Aurelia ducks and parries before she strikes again, the blades shivering as they hit bone, the left one sticking hard, eliciting a howl that reverberates through the tunnel. Stepping back, she wrests the right knife free before the attacker goes for Thorne again.

He is backed up against the wall, but Aurelia has a firm grip on her remaining blade now and steps in close, stabbing up and in, relishing the satisfying quiver of steel, the warm gush of blood over her hand, as the knife sinks deep. There’s a groan and shudder, then stillness.

So much for stealth, Aurelia thinks, pulling her knife free and crouching into a defensive stance between Helvia and Bain, Theo and the others at her back. Hunched together in the dark, they hold position, waiting, listening, but the only noise is the distant drip of water and the ever-present hum of the manufactorum.

After the noisy fight, the silence is unbearable. A shiver runs through Aurelia’s spine into her right arm, making the knife tremble. She adjusts her grip, dragging a sleeve across her blood-smeared goggles, peering into the darkness, but there is nothing.

An eternity seems to pass before Bain calls the all-clear, his voice a raspy whisper, and Aurelia breathes out in relief. Around her, the other Scrappers do the same, cursing and adjusting their packs and weapons.

‘Is that… an ork?’ Daveed asks as they gather round the carcass on the floor.

Thorne shakes his head, his flak armour etched deep by a vicious slash of claws. ‘No. A cudbear. Not even a full-grown one by the looks of it. My grandpa always said they lived in the old mining tunnels up north.’

Aurelia takes in the creature’s long fangs, the dark violet fur matted with blood.

‘Blasted thing nearly sheared my head off,’ Helvia grumbles, blood running down her neck from a cut across her ear.

Captain Bain picks up Aurelia’s knife from the floor, wiping the steel clean before he hands it back. ‘Impressive set of knives, sergeant. Impressive knife work, too.’

‘Thank you, captain.’ Aurelia sheathes the knife and tries not to look at Theodora. ‘I learned from the best.’

But if Theodora remembers any of their back-alley practice fights, where they would feint and slash with the shivs they’d fashioned from old scrap metal in order to survive, she doesn’t show it.

There is no Theo any more, Aurelia reminds herself when they get moving. There is only the commissar. Whatever she was before is done and gone.

The tunnel curves as it steadily climbs upward, and still they walk on, the darkness erasing Aurelia’s sense of time. Outside it was cold enough to freeze your breath, but here the air is warm, stale, dense, foetid. They halt at the first junction where the tunnel splits in two. One path continues upwards, the other is narrow, littered with rocks, sloping down.

‘We’re getting close to the patrolled levels,’ Bain says. ‘Proceed with care.’

The manufactorum’s heartbeat is close here, the sonorous throb burrowing into Aurelia’s mind and flesh. Her skin prickles, like a thousand insects are crawling beneath it.

‘I thought we were sure these levels weren’t patrolled,’ Steen says, eyes large and luminous behind the goggles, a crack of panic in his voice. ‘If they find us here, they’ll trap and kill us.’

Aurelia wishes she could clamp his mouth shut with her fist.

‘Nothing the Scrappers of the Keplerian Twenty-Third can’t handle,’ she replies.

‘Keep yourselves steady and see the mission through, Guardsmen. Remember, the Emperor walks with us in this as in all things.’ Theodora does not raise her voice but puts her hand lightly on the grip of the holstered bolt pistol. ‘I trust that He shall find none of us wanting.’

At least Steen has enough sense to shut up after that.

Aurelia leads the way through the tunnel leading upward, quickening her steps at first, but soon her pace slows. The tunnel narrows, the ceiling gets lower until they’re bent almost double, rocks scratching at them from all sides, closing in ever tighter, until a cave-in blocks their way. It’s as if the mountain has shifted, tilting up the floor and collapsing the tunnel on top of it, leaving only a narrow space between ceiling and debris.

‘Nothing to it,’ Captain Bain says, undaunted. ‘We crawl. Just like basic training.’

Nothing to it.

Aurelia heads in first, down on her belly, using knees and elbows to drag herself forward. She tries not to think of the weight of the explosives in her pack, or of the weight of the mountain pressing down on her.

‘I hate this place,’ Steen whispers, his voice echoing dully against the rock.

‘Keep it to yourself, Guardsman,’ Aurelia snaps.

‘This is not so bad.’ It’s Captain Bain, sounding for all the world as if he’s sitting in the refectory, telling stories over a recaff. ‘Some of you might’ve heard the story that I killed a Chaos Space Marine with my bare hands during the invasion,’ he goes on. ‘It isn’t true, of course.’ A pause, the sound of bodies shuffling through the debris. ‘I needed a knife and a lasgun to do it.’

Aurelia can’t help herself; even with the mountain bearing down on her, she chuckles. The others chuckle too, mingled with the nervous titters from the newbloods.

They keep crawling, and while the space gets no wider, the shifting surface of scree beneath them tilts after a while, as if they’ve crested a rise and are heading down. Aurelia visualises the map in her head, lets her mind run through the passages to keep the claustrophobia at bay.

‘We’re close to the reactor core,’ she says, her voice tense and raspy in her own ears, and even as she speaks the words, the passage widens around her. With a last push, she scrambles out of a low, narrow opening into an intact tunnel littered with debris and boulders. She gets to her feet while the others emerge, cursing and coughing.

The cave-in is behind them, the opening they’ve squeezed through a dark, jagged maw at floor level, and the reek that’s been present since they started crawling is overpowering here. It’s the smell of butchery, of massacre, of corpses left to rot. Looking ahead, Aurelia stumbles.

The tunnel is a slaughterhouse, walls and floor draped with the decomposed remains of dozens of dead, bodies mutilated beyond recognition. Skulls and femurs, vertebrae and ribs litter the path. Some of the bodies have been flayed, skins plastered to the walls, etched and branded with sigils the sight of which makes Aurelia’s vision warp, her stomach lurch. Around her, the others retch and gasp. Only Bain and Theo seem unmoved.

‘Emperor save us,’ Thorne breathes while Daveed mumbles something that sounds like a prayer.

Aurelia forces down the taste of bile. After fifteen years of planetwide war, resistance and strife, of invaders and home-grown traitors tearing the world apart, everyone on Kepler-Gamma knows what the enemy is capable of, and everyone has seen their share of horror. But the fear washing over them here is not just an emotion, it’s a palpable presence, its touch debilitating, paralysing, corrosive.

‘Reminds me of the shrine we burned on that raid last year,’ Helvia says, voice almost steady. Aurelia nods, remembering the bones, the blood, the altars, the soul-twisting darkness of it all, the cultists still calling on the Ruinous Powers as they were gunned down.

‘What happened here?’ Aurelia asks, unable to disguise the fear and disgust in her voice. ‘Why leave them like this?’

‘Heresy,’ Theodora says, face grim as she looks around. ‘Pure heresy. Rituals to placate their vile, false gods.’ She nods at the remains. ‘Judging by the shreds of clothing, these people were workers from the manufactorum. Maybe they tried to find a way out. Maybe they tried to hide. And when the cultists who had infiltrated the facility found them… they were turned into meat.’ Theo looks at each of them in turn, and when she speaks again, her words blaze with wrath. ‘They did this to people who couldn’t fight back. Helpless, unarmed workers. People with families and children. We will make them pay for it. We will pull this place down on their heads and make them rue the day they turned on the Imperium.’

Aurelia nods, determination kindling beneath the fear in her chest. Looking around, she can tell it kindles in the others too. She gazes back at Theo, at her sister’s tall, unbent silhouette.

When they were children, and Father told them to stand up straight like the Emperor was watching, Aurelia always laughed, but Theo never did. She was always tough as nails, that’s how she kept herself and Aurelia alive after their parents died, but the ten years they’ve spent apart have tempered Theo’s toughness into something stronger still, something as sharp and deadly and untarnished as Keplerian steel.

This time, Theodora takes the lead with Bain, and Aurelia follows, the squad falling in behind.

Aurelia counts two hundred steps and six side passages before they reach a narrow archway leading into a cavern. The main tunnel continues past it to the right, and there’s a glint of steel and rivets further along: a maintenance hatch leading to the manufactorum proper.

‘This is it.’ Captain Bain stops. ‘The reactor hall is right above us. As far as we know, this area is not regularly patrolled, but we must be quick. Three of you will stay with me by the entrance and keep watch. The rest will lay the explosives in here, enough to collapse the chamber and cause the core to ignite. Now let’s get this done.’

The cavernous chamber beyond the archway is circular, fifty paces in diameter, the rough ceiling almost low enough to touch and reinforced with rockcrete beams. At regular intervals, thick pillars sink into the stone floor. The sound of the manufactorum fills the space, trembling in Aurelia’s head and guts.

They sling their packs on the floor, dividing up the wrapped bricks of explosives, while Captain Bain takes up position at the doorway with Steen, Helvia and a newblood.

‘We’re missing a package,’ Aurelia says after counting the bricks twice.

‘Probably a miscount,’ Bain tells her from the door. ‘You have enough to get the job done?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘Then get started.’

‘Yes, captain.’

Aurelia is at the back of the chamber, attaching the grey, pliable mix of fyceline and plastek to the innermost wall and pillars when Theodora stops beside her.

‘You have some skills, sergeant.’

Aurelia looks up. It’s the first time since Theo came back that she’s addressed Aurelia directly, without giving an order. ‘Thank you, commissar.’

Tall as Aurelia is, Theo is still a good inch taller, and up close, that difference makes Aurelia feel twelve years old again. Like the day she stood beside Theo in the orphanage’s hallway, while the missionaries from the schola progenium spoke with the headmistress in the office. Aurelia remembers Theo’s solemn face, and her own giddy, stupid questions. ‘What’s the schola like? Will we share a bunk bed there too?’

Theo hadn’t answered.

The morning after, Theo’s bunk was empty when Aurelia awoke. She ran all the way to the void port – fear and panic ripping through her guts – but Theo was already gone. And the one memory Aurelia has never been able to shake, the one that is still stuck in her mind like a jagged piece of shrapnel, is of herself, standing at the void port, snot and tears smeared across her cheeks, looking up at an empty sky.

For ten years, she has done her best to make a new life for herself in the hollow space her sister left behind. Now, here’s Theo, back again, large as life, and infuriatingly unmoved. As if the past didn’t hurt her then; as if it doesn’t haunt her now.

‘Few commissars get to come home,’ Aurelia blurts out.

Theodora’s expression is unreadable. ‘No commissars get to come home.’

Aurelia wants to ask what that means, but is interrupted by a lasgun blast, followed by Bain’s harsh, ‘Cease fire!’

It’s Steen. Lasgun held high, his voice a wail. ‘I saw something! In the tunnel.’

Bain wrests away the weapon. ‘There’s nothing there, Guardsman.’

They fall silent, listening.

Perhaps, Aurelia thinks as the silence holds for a moment, as she jams the last bar of explosives into a crack in the ceiling, adrenaline coursing through her veins. Perhaps…

But no. There’s the distant blare of an alarm. The clang of steel. Shouting. Heavy boots.

‘They’re coming,’ the newblood calls out, voice cracking.

‘Finish up,’ Bain orders, but whatever he says next is lost in a rattle of autogun fire.

Out of the corner of her eye, Aurelia sees Thorne and Henryk frantically affix the last of their explosives to a pillar at the back of the chamber. Steen and Helvia seek cover by the doorway while Bain fires his lasgun into the tunnel. He is shouting but Aurelia only hears the rough, concussive blasts of stubber rounds. She knows what he must be asking for, though.

Thorne. The detonators.

Two newbloods hit the ground, and the enemy push through the doorway. Aurelia counts eight with more on the way. They are garbed in what looks like old Imperial uniforms, ripped and resewn, studded with spikes and plates of armaplas and steel, every face marked with crude tattoos, akin to the sigils that mark the flayed skins in the hallway. They charge in, bellowing, and the world turns to noise and bullets.

Henryk goes down, a ragged hole punched through his back and chest. Daveed is knocked off his feet by a close-range blast.

Taking cover behind a pillar, Aurelia fires her lasgun. Quick shots, hastily aimed, but two attackers go down, one shot through the neck, the other in the gut. Moving low and fast she checks on the newbloods and Henryk. They’re dead, their blood soiling her boots and knees.

At the door Theo fires her bolt pistol, the crack of it deafening. A stubber round passes close enough to burn Aurelia’s cheek and there’s a muffled grunt behind her. Turning, she sees blood pouring from Thorne’s forehead into his eyes. He drops to his knees.

At the archway, Helvia is grasping her lasgun left-handed, right arm hanging limp. There is dust and smoke as if a grenade’s gone off, but Aurelia has Thorne now and is dragging him off his knees, grabbing the pack beside him. She pulls him with her, exiting behind the others as they retreat the way they came. Two newbloods lie dead outside the doorway. Theo and Bain are trying to hold off another group of heretics spilling from the steel hatch, but the heavy stubber fire drives them back. No sign of Daveed.

Looking back, Aurelia glimpses something at the back of the tunnel, something standing just beyond the threshold of the open maintenance hatch, backlit by the glare on the other side. The brightness confuses the nightsense goggles, but there’s a silhouette there, man-shaped, but so tall it has to bend down to look through the hatch. As the figure moves in the light, Aurelia has a fleeting vision of ornately sculpted armour flashing with scarlet and gold, a horned head, and shadows wrapping themselves around the apparition like a cloak of smoke and darkness. It’s just a glimpse, but even so there’s a sickening lurch of dread in her gut.

She almost loses her grip on Thorne, but Bain hauls her up, shouting words she cannot hear, her ears still ringing from the noise, but it’s enough to snap her to attention, to get her legs moving. With Thorne leaning on her, Aurelia turns and fires, lasgun rounds burning through flak armour and bone, and then the heretics are falling back and taking cover.

Waiting for reinforcements, Aurelia thinks, half expecting the shadow-cloaked apparition to come tearing through the passage. It doesn’t, but the soul-warping fear remains.

They’re almost back at the cave-in and hunker down in one of the partially collapsed side tunnels. Helvia lays down a barrage of covering fire as Aurelia drags Thorne out of the main passage, away from the branded skins and mutilated bones. For a blessed moment, all goes quiet.

‘They’re regrouping,’ Helvia says, tightening a makeshift tourniquet around her right upper arm, blood soaking through the sleeve. ‘We don’t have long.’

‘I saw…’ Aurelia shudders, flashing back to the silhouette, the horned head, the shadows swirling round it. ‘Something, it was…’

‘A Chaos Space Marine,’ Captain Bain says, his scarred features stern. ‘Yes. I saw it too.’ He turns to Thorne. ‘Set it off. Now.’

Thorne’s face is smeared with blood, part of his scalp singed and bleeding, but his eyes are open, and so is his pack. ‘I don’t have the detonator.’ His voice is strained. ‘This isn’t my pack.’

Aurelia feels an icy stab of dread.

Captain Bain has gone very still. ‘Where is it?’

Thorne glances over Bain’s shoulder. ‘Back there. I put it down. Henryk must have grabbed mine when they came through… and he…’

‘We’ll go back for it.’ Theodora reloads her bolt pistol. ‘Fight our way in. Finish it.’

Aurelia frowns. ‘Forgive me, commissar, but the six of us can’t fight our way back in there and get to the safe distance before we set it off.’

‘We just need the detonator,’ Theodora says. ‘That’s the mission.’

Thorne looks up. ‘You mean, we set it off with us in here? No. We get the detonators and move to a safe distance. The range…’

Bain bares his teeth in something that is not a smile. ‘The range of a detonator in here, with all this rock and rockcrete, is almost zero. There is no safe distance, Guardsman.’

Steen curses. ‘Of all the cracked missions…’

Theo cuts him off. ‘I will shoot you for insubordination, Guardsman. Even here. Even now. Captain, if I go now, I can still set off the explosion as planned.’

The chill sinks deeper into Aurelia’s gut.

No commissar ever gets to go home.

‘So this is a suicide mission?’

‘It’s not suicide, sergeant,’ Theo replies, ‘it’s war.’

Aurelia doesn’t take her eyes off Theo. ‘Are they even sending a Valkyrie to pick us up at the rendezvous point after?’

‘Oh, they’ll send a Valkyrie, all right,’ Bain says. ‘To check whether we got the job done.’

There’s scattered autogun fire in the tunnel, and Helvia responds with a fusillade from her lasgun.

‘They’ll be coming through soon,’ Theo says. ‘Your orders, captain?’

Bain wipes the dirt and sweat off his face with the back of his hand. ‘Right now, these warp-worshipping scum are trying to get us. My guess is that they assume we’re part of a bigger attack, not that we’re sabotaging the facility. If we head back, we risk them killing all of us. Then they’ll find and dismantle the explosives. So. We split up. I’ll head back for the detonator. The rest of you make a break for the exit, keep moving, creating all the noise and trouble you can muster, for as long as you can.’

Thorne stares. ‘That’s suicide, captain.’

‘Like the commissar said, it’s not suicide, it’s war. You know it, Guardsman, and so do I. I have been fighting in this war for the Emperor and the Imperium since I was old enough to hold a lasgun, and I have put my life on the line for a lot less than what’s at stake here today.’ Bain’s scarred features show the barest hint of a smile. ‘Besides, I’m not sending anyone else. None of you have ever faced a Chaos Space Marine and lived.’

‘Captain…’ Theo sounds as if she wants to argue, but Bain shakes his head.

‘Those are your orders, commissar. See it done. You too, sergeant.’

Aurelia meets Bain’s steely gaze. She pulls her right-hand knife loose from its sheath, and hands it over. ‘In case you need an extra blade, captain.’

Bain’s hand closes around the hilt. He glances at Theo, then back at Aurelia with a look that is hard to read. ‘The Emperor moves our fates in strange ways, sergeant. May He always light your way.’

‘And yours,’ Aurelia replies, an unfamiliar tightness in her throat.

Then, everything is in motion. Helvia throws a smoke grenade into the main tunnel while Captain Bain ducks into the opposite side passage, a lasgun on his back and Aurelia’s knife tucked into his belt beside his own combat knife. With a shout and clatter of autogun fire, four heretics burst through the smoke and dust at the far end of the tunnel. Aurelia stands her ground beside Helvia, firing her lasgun until Thorne, Theo and Steen reach the cave-in, moving into the narrow opening. The enemy is close enough that Aurelia can make out the tarnished buckles on their belts, the crude pattern of heretical tattoos snaking down their faces, the mutilated wings of the aquilas on their armour, the eagles desecrated by foul emblems.

She holds her ground a moment longer before shouting at Helvia: ‘Time to go!’

Helvia nods, and Aurelia heads for the pile of debris behind them. Not until she crouches down to push into the narrow passage, does she realise that Helvia is still firing, lasgun tucked tight under her left arm.

‘Helvia!’

Helvia half turns towards her, shrugs her injured shoulder, a half-smile tugging at her face.

‘Can’t crawl with one arm, sergeant,’ she shouts back. ‘But I can shoot.’

Helvia walks towards the heretics, lasgun blasting, the stubbers and autoguns returning fire. It’s over in five breaths but four heretics go down on their knees, on their bellies, before Helvia tumbles into the dust, creating a brief lull before the rest of the heretics come charging through the tunnel.

With bullets slamming into the rocks around her, Aurelia pushes into the narrow space beneath the debris of the cave-in. Without her pack, it’s easier to manoeuvre, but the weight of the mountain is still enough to squeeze the breath from her lungs. There’s movement behind her almost right away, and she expects a bullet to take her, hands to grab her. She crawls until she hits an obstruction blocking the passage ahead.

‘I can’t do it.’ It’s Steen, his voice a whisper. He’s curled up on his side, and Aurelia tries to push past him.

‘Move, Guardsman. Just a little further.’

Steen shakes his head, blood seeping from his mouth. From the way he’s shivering Aurelia figures he took a bullet in the gut, but she can’t see the wound, and when she reaches out to touch him, a hand grabs hold of her ankle. She’s yanked backward with unrelenting force, the rubble cutting into her face and hands. Aurelia kicks hard at the hand around her ankle, but the grip is like a vice. Rolling over on her back in the cramped space, she braces against the scree with her other foot and tries to aim her lasgun, hoping she won’t hit her own feet. There’s a blur of movement as the attacker heaves himself on top of her legs, reaching out to knock the weapon out of her hands. Aurelia jams her knee into ribs and guts and draws her knife, contorting her body to extend her reach, the roof of the tunnel scraping her head, the rough walls raking the skin off her hand as she slashes. The attacker screams and before he can grab her again, she sits up enough to jam the blade into the hollow beneath his brows, burying the steel in the soft tissue of the eye socket, kicking at the hilt to make sure it strikes home.

Harsh voices echo through the passage beyond the twitching body. Aurelia drags herself back to Steen. She reaches for him, and finds his hand, clutched tightly around something made of metal. Something with a firing pin. A grenade.

Steen has removed his goggles and moved to the side as far as he is able. His eyes are glassy with pain, his breathing fast and shallow. ‘For the Emperor,’ he whispers as Aurelia pushes past him. He makes no move to follow, and she keeps going, wondering if he’s got the strength to pull that pin.

The answer is a flash of light and heat before the darkness takes her.

When she wakes, Thorne sits beside her. Theodora is standing by the wall, bolt pistol aimed down the tunnel where a muted, grinding, mechanical sound is coming from the cave-in.

‘That’s a heavy rock drill,’ Theo says, ‘and they’re almost through.’

‘Couldn’t drag you any further than this, sergeant,’ Thorne says, sounding apologetic. ‘Can you walk?’

Aurelia tries to stand. Her legs and arms are scratched and bleeding, but there are no broken bones as far as she can tell.

‘Might as well stay here,’ she says, her thoughts on Helvia, Steen, Bain, Henryk, Daveed. ‘Take as many with us as possible.’

‘No.’ Theo’s voice is firm. ‘Captain Bain’s order stands. Our job is to keep moving and divert their attention for as long as we can.’

‘You think he’s still alive?’ Aurelia asks, throat raw from dust and grit. She thinks of the determined look on Bain’s scarred face when he took the knife from her hand, of the menacing silhouette looming in the tunnel.

‘Irrelevant. The order stands. We keep moving.’

‘Even if we get to the exit, we’re dead meat.’ Aurelia looks at the cave-in, where the mechanical sound is getting louder. ‘Once they get through with that drill, whoever comes out will take us down even if the explosion goes off, even if the reactor ignites like it’s supposed to. We’ll still be dead.’

‘I rigged the exit.’

Theo and Aurelia turn to stare at Thorne. Theo speaks first.

‘You were not ordered to…’

Thorne laughs, a pale, worn sound. ‘I know.’

Aurelia looks at Thorne, at his familiar, crooked smile beneath the blood and the exhaustion. ‘The missing explosives. I knew I didn’t miscount. You took those bricks.’

‘Sorry, sergeant.’

Aurelia slaps his upper arm. ‘Checking the detonators. Should’ve known you were up to something.’

‘What exactly did you do?’ Theo’s look of disbelief is fading, her voice sharp.

‘Well, while you were busy teaching the sergeant a lesson, commissar, I decided I didn’t like the look of this tunnel. Figured a booby trap might come in handy on the way out. It’s tripwired.’

‘You disobeyed orders and imperilled our mission,’ Theo says, raising her weapon. ‘I should put a bolt through your skull right here.’

Thorne lowers his head. ‘Yes, commissar.’

Aurelia puts out a hand, not sure what she means to do. ‘Commissar…’

Theo ignores her, eyes fixed on Thorne. ‘However, on this occasion I will defer your punishment until this mission’s over.’ She looks away. ‘So if your plan works, you’ll be in real trouble.’

Thorne’s smile is thin beneath the dirt and blood. ‘Thank you, commissar.’

Aurelia struggles to her feet, bending to pick up her lasgun. At the same time, the grinding noise from the cave-in ratchets up to a deafening roar as the drill breaks through. The blast of a heavy stubber round makes Aurelia grab the lasgun and dive for cover, adrenaline flooding her senses, and then Thorne makes a sound, choked and small. He’s still standing, but blood covers his face and neck, spilling out of his mouth and eyes.

He falls.

Aurelia catches him, as she’s caught him so many times before, as he has caught her, as death has passed them by in a hundred other battles.

Not this time.

She fires her lasgun as two heretics burst out of the debris, crawling out behind the heavy drill. There is more movement behind, and she fires again, and again, and again.

‘Aurelia!’ It’s Theodora, screaming in her face. ‘Move, sergeant.’ And they do.

Theo has Thorne’s lasgun and her own bolt pistol. They fire as they run, the taste of blood and death in Aurelia’s mouth. Ahead is the tunnel, everlasting. Behind is the enemy, uncounted.

When they push past the carcass of the cudbear, skirting its huge paws and head, Aurelia feels the ghosts of her squad crowding close. All of them gone, all of them lost. Even as she runs, rage and pain burn through her, a flame so fierce she feels incandescent in the dark.

Autogun and stubber fire echoes through the passage, striking sparks from the rocks. And then Aurelia hears it. An explosion, far-off and muffled, followed by a quaking shudder that shakes the tunnel, almost knocking her off her feet. Even as she staggers, a heady wave of triumph rushes through her like flames and lightning. Because somewhere, back there, in the depths of the mountain, in the heart of darkness, Bain has achieved the impossible and fulfilled the purpose of their mission.

Wordless, she looks at Theo, who stumbles beside her, and Theo looks back, the flicker of a smile cutting through the blood and grime.

Their pursuers have fallen back for a moment and they keep going as a second, distant explosion, bigger than the first, makes the whole mountain groan and rumble like a dying beast. Aurelia knows it is the reactor core igniting, knows they’re almost out of time. The air is thick with dust, riven with the sound of cracking stone and weapons fire. She can’t see Theodora any more, neither behind nor ahead.

‘Theo!’

The tunnel shakes, raining rocks and rubble in her path. Behind her, emerging out of the dust, two heretics barrel towards her, weapons drawn, one with an autogun, the other holding a heavy drill aloft like a melee weapon, their armour emblazoned with disfigured aquilas, wings defiled by heretical sigils. Aurelia fires, clipping one of them in the throat, but a round of autogun fire knocks the lasgun out of her hands. She reaches for her knife, remembering too late that the sheath is empty, the long steel still buried deep in a heretic’s eye socket. The autogun makes a ratcheting sound as another clip is fed into place.

A bang. Two. Loud enough to split the world. And yet Aurelia lives.

Theodora steps out of the dust, her blue commissar’s uniform stained and bloodied, the bolt pistol in her hand. She is walking straight and tall, like the Emperor is watching.

The mountain shudders, and Theo steadies herself against the wall. ‘Leg.’ She’s breathing fast. ‘Got hit in the thigh. Bleeding out.’

She crumples to the ground and Aurelia crouches beside her. Blood glistens in the dark, soaking through the uniform, soaking into the silver sash at Theo’s waist. Aurelia fumbles at the torn fabric, but Theo slaps her hand away.

‘No. Too late.’ Her lips move again and Aurelia leans close to catch the words, because Theo’s voice is no more than a ragged whisper. ‘I need to tell you. Should have done it before. When I left you here. Back then. I knew you couldn’t come with me. They told me, but I couldn’t tell you. Didn’t want to leave you. Couldn’t stay. Couldn’t lie either.’ A raspy breath. ‘I said nothing. I’m sorry.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Aurelia murmurs, but Theo grips her hand tighter.

‘I looked down when that shuttle took off. Couldn’t see you. Told myself you’d make it. And you did.’

Aurelia thinks of herself, standing at the void port, all those years ago, looking up. Thinks of Theo, gazing down. All that distance, all those years, all that silence, between them. She tries to gather up her sister in her arms, but Theo shrugs her off, blood between her lips.

‘I knew none of us would come back from this mission. Didn’t know until I got here we’d bring you along. Couldn’t tell you. Bad for morale.’

‘Theo…’

‘Take it.’ Theodora thrusts the bolt pistol at her, and Aurelia’s fingers close around the grip, the metal still warm from Theo’s hand. Theo nods, lips curled into the shadow of a smile, each shallow breath rattling in her chest.

Aurelia bows her head. There is too much to say, but she has no voice to speak.

‘It’s your turn to leave me. That’s an order, Aurelia.’ Her name on Theo’s lips. ‘Go.’

From the tunnel come the harsh cries of the enemy, even as the mountain rumbles and splits apart, even as they teeter at the edge of the abyss. Aurelia looks down at Theo, but her sister’s eyes are closed. She gets up, a numbness spreading through her limbs until nothing can hurt her any more.

Aurelia runs. She runs until she sees the bleeding edge of midwinter sun seeping through the faraway jaws of the mountain. An autogun round burns through her shoulder, but there is no weakness any more, no pain; she is wrath and ruin, and nothing can stop her.

In the faint light of the tunnel’s entrance, she spots the tripwire, a thin filament of metal, gleaming, where Thorne left it. She yanks at it before she tumbles out of the mountain, into the snow.

The explosion is nothing compared to the annihilation already rocking the mountain behind her, but it’s enough to propel her into the river at the bottom of the ravine. She rolls over in the shallow icy water as the entrance collapses, consuming whatever came after her. Above, the manufactorum’s immense shadow quakes and shudders, riven by fire as it tumbles into ruin, spewing ash and dust across the ravine.

Sergeant Aurelia Shale is on her knees with a bolt pistol in her hand. The weapon is lighter than she expected, lighter than everything else she carries with her. Her life, such as it is. Her unit. Her friends. Her family. Helvia and Thorne. Bain. Theo. Their lives and deaths are hers to carry now. Each life lost a gust of wind to stoke the fire of her hate in the days to come, each death a stone to sharpen the steely edge of her determination. To live. To fight. To remember.

Far away, in the amethyst and blood of a sun that will not rise above the peaks of the Jagged Edge, a Valkyrie swoops down over the snowy plains. Aurelia gets to her feet and straightens her back. She walks towards the Valkyrie, towards the horizon, towards the light.

About the Author

Maria Haskins is a Swedish-Canadian writer and translator. She was born in Sweden and debuted as a writer there, but currently lives just outside Vancouver on the Pacific west coast with a husband, two kids, several noisy budgies, and a very large black dog. Her speculative fiction has appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Fireside, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and elsewhere. ‘The Jagged Edge’ is Maria’s first story for Black Library.

An extract from Honourbound.

Commissar Severina Raine slides a fresh magazine into her bolt pistol with a hard click. She has replaced the eight-round magazine four times. Thirty-two shots fired.

Six of them to execute her own troops.

Raine has fought many wars on many fronts across the Bale Stars, and almost all of them have been against the Sighted, or their splinter cults. She has seen the way they turn worlds with whispers and false promises. The way they set workers against their masters, and guards against those that they are meant to protect. It’s what makes them dangerous. When you battle the Sighted, you battle the people of the Bale Stars too. Scribes and soldiers. Priests and peacekeepers. The poor, the downtrodden, the ambitious and the reckless. For some of those that serve with her, that knowledge is too much. For some it is just fear that means they find the trigger impossible to pull. No matter the reason, they will find themselves looking down the barrel of her pistol, Penance, in turn. Just like Penance, Raine is made for the act of judgement. For the instant before the strike of the hammer and the burst of flame. She understands what it means to pull the trigger, and what it makes her. She is not driven by anger, or malice. That would undermine her purpose, which is the same no matter the crime.

To eliminate weakness.

Raine crouches down and takes Jona Veer’s ident-tags from around his neck. They will not be sent back to Antar as with the honoured dead. They will be disposed of at the end of the fight on Laxus Secundus. His name will go with them, to be forgotten in time by everyone but her, because Raine never forgets the dead, honoured or not.

‘Commissar.’

The voice belongs to Captain Yuri Hale. It’s rough-edged, like he is. The captain of Grey Company is tall, like most Antari. Three deep, severe scars run down the left side of his face from hairline to chin. The Antari call him lucky because he managed to keep his eye. They say he must have been graced with that luck by a white witch, or by fate itself. Raine doesn’t believe in luck. She believes that Yuri Hale survives the same way the rest of them do.

By fighting for every breath.

‘More power spikes from the inner forge,’ he says.

Raine puts Veer’s tags in her pocket, where they clatter against the others, then she gets to her feet and looks to the dust-caked screen on the auspex kit Hale is holding. When the regiment first entered the forges, more than six hours ago, it was registering soft spikes. Now the peaks are jagged, with the regularity of a great, slow heartbeat.

‘Whatever the Sighted are doing in there, it’s burning hot,’ Hale says, and he frowns. ‘Kayd’s been picking up enemy vox too.’

‘On an open channel?’

‘Aye, it’s as if they don’t care if we hear it.’

‘Anything of use?’ Raine asks.

Hale’s frown deepens, and it pulls at the scars on his face. ‘The words were Laxian. Kayd reckons they said something like “it draws near”.’

Despite the arid heat of the forge, Raine feels a distinct chill at those words. The tactical briefing two days prior had been clear. The primary forge on Laxus Secundus is an invaluable asset, both tactically and logistically, and not just because of the super-heavy tanks built there, but because of what waits in the inner forges. High Command did not disclose the purpose of the machines that Raine and the Antari would find there, only that they must not fall into Sighted hands. That for the enemy to use them successfully would be catastrophic, not just for the battle inside the forges, but for the war effort across Laxus Secundus and the crusade front.

‘We are running out of time,’ Raine says.

Hale nods. ‘And support too. Blue Company are pinned down on approach to the Beta Gate, and Gold have yet to reach the inner forges. I’m calling the push now, before the Sighted can send whatever draws near against us, or we lose everything we’ve bled for.’

‘Understood, captain,’ Raine says. ‘We will not fail.’

Hale glances to where Jona Veer lies dead. Raine knows him well enough to see what he is feeling by the set of his shoulders, and the way his eyes narrow. Hale is disappointed. Ashamed, on the boy’s behalf. Raine also knows that, despite all of Veer’s failings, it is hard for Hale to accept judgement against one of his own.

‘Is there anything else?’ Raine says.

Hale looks back to her. ‘No, commissar,’ he says. ‘Not a thing.’

Then Hale gets to rounding up the Antari, voxing orders to the rest of his company pushing up through the machine halls. They have orders to fulfil, traitors to silence, and those machines to retake.

And her judgements are something that Yuri Hale knows better than to question.

Lydia Zane can feel the touch of death on every inch of her body. It makes her ache, skin to bones. The Sighted are doing something in the forges that casts a long shadow. Something that echoes in the immaterium like a scream. It has been the same for Zane since the moment she set foot on Laxus Secundus, death’s long shadow clinging to her.

Like that damned hateful bird.

It is sitting there now, talons crooked around the rim of a girder. It is so very still, that bird. She has not yet seen it blink. It never cries, or ruffles its feathers. It just sits still and stares.

On the pillar below the bird’s perch is a symbol, daubed in blood. The smell carries to Zane even over the heavy stink of smoke. The symbol is a spiral surrounding a slit-pupilled eye. The mark of the Sighted. The rings of the spiral are just a hair off perfectly spaced, and it makes the breath in Zane’s lungs thinner, looking at it. The Sighted who painted the symbol lies broken at the foot of the pillar. So very broken. He is clad in fatigues and feathers, his skin inked with iridescent, metallic tattoos. The Sighted was one of the flock hunting Jona Veer through the machine halls. Zane caught sight of him slipping into the shadows between the half-built tanks during the gunfight. He thought himself hidden, but he was wrong. There is no hiding from Zane, because she does not need footprints or line of sight or even sound in order to hunt. She followed him into the darkness by the stink of his traitor-thoughts and came upon him painting the spiral and the slitted eye.

And then she broke him.

Zane winds her fingers tighter around her darkwood staff. The psionic crystal atop it hums. One at a time, bolts pop out of the pillar and join the objects floating in the air around Zane. Tools. Rivets and screws. Empty shell casings. Splinters of bone. They drift around her absently. The floor tremors under her feet as the panels start to bend upwards. Zane tastes blood, running thick over her lips. Blood on the pillar. Blood that makes up the painted eye at the centre of the spiral, unblinking.

Just like the bird.

‘Zane.’

She turns away from the bird and its black eyes and the way it never blinks them. Commissar Raine is standing there with her pistol drawn, but not raised. A threat in waiting. Zane finds she cannot speak. It is as if her lips have been sealed by all of that blood. The objects circle her like a storm, with lightning arcing between them. Raine does not flinch.

‘Control,’ Raine says, the word carrying clear.

The pistol does not move. The barrel is round and dark, like the eye painted in blood. Like the eyes of the bird. Like Raine’s eyes, unblinking.

‘Control,’ Zane slurs.

More blood finds its way into her mouth.

‘Tell me about the tree,’ Raine says.

‘About the tree,’ Zane says, her voice a rasp. ‘The singing tree.’

‘And why is it called the singing tree?’ Raine asks.

Zane blinks. Against the back of her eyelids she sees it. The singing tree standing on the cliff’s edge, the roots curling over it like the bird’s talons around the girder. The bone-white branches reaching up to meet Antar’s thunderhead sky.

‘Because that is where we would go to sing to Him on Earth,’ she says. ‘Because it was as close as you could get to the heavens.’

‘And He spoke to you there,’ Raine says.

‘In the rustle of the leaves,’ Zane says.

‘What did He say?’ Raine asks.

Zane feels the ache in her bones lessen. The objects orbiting her begin their fall to earth.

‘That I will be tested,’ she says. ‘And that I must never break.’

Metal objects clatter off the metal floor, and it sounds like a storm.

‘Lydia Zane,’ Zane says, finishing the ritual words. ‘Primaris psyker. Graded Epsilon. Eleventh Antari Rifles.’

The cables connecting to her scalp click as they cool. Zane wipes her hand through the blood on her face, painting a red streak up the back of it.

‘Apologies, commissar,’ she says, bowing low. ‘It is this place. The darkness in it.’

‘The Sighted?’ Raine asks.

‘I know the shape of their darkness,’ Zane says. ‘This is different. Things are changing.’

‘If you see anything, tell me,’ Raine says.

Zane knows that she means foresee, not just see, but it still feels like a cruel joke given the bird. The bird that she has been seeing for months now, since she walked the crystal tunnels on Gholl. The bird that she will speak of to no one, especially not to Raine, because to do so would be to invite death.

Because Zane knows that, like every instant of her life so far, the bird is just another test, and that she will not break.

Click here to buy Honourbound.

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First published as an ebook in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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