Exhumed

by Steve Parker

The Thunderhawk gunship loomed out of the clouds like a monstrous bird of prey, wings spread, turbines growling, airbrakes flared to slow it for landing. It was black, its fuselage marked with three symbols: the Imperial aquila, noble and golden; the ‘I’ of the Emperor’s Holy Inquisition, a symbol even the righteous knew better than to greet gladly; and another symbol, a skull cast in silver with a gleaming red, cybernetic eye. Derlon Saezar didn’t know that one, had never seen it before, but it sent a chill up his spine all the same. Whichever august Imperial body the symbol represented was obviously linked to the Holy Inquisition. That couldn’t be good news.

Eyes locked to his vid-monitor, Saezar watched tensely as the gunship banked hard towards the small landing facility he managed, its prow slicing through the veils of windblown dust like a knife through silk. There was a burst of static-riddled speech on his headset. In response, he tapped several codes into the console in front of him, keyed his microphone and said, ‘Acknowledged, One-Seven-One. Clearance codes accepted. Proceed to Bay Four. This is an enclosed atmosphere facility. I’m uploading our safety and debarkation protocols to you now. Over.’

His fingers rippled over the console’s runeboard, and the massive metal jaws of Bay Four began to grate open, ready to swallow the unwelcome black craft. Thick toxic air rushed in. Breathable air rushed out. The entire facility shuddered and groaned in complaint, as it always did when a spacecraft came or went. The Adeptus Mechanicus had built this station, Orga Station, quickly and with the minimum systems and resources it would need to do its job. No more, no less.

It was a rusting, dust-scoured place, squat and ugly on the outside, dank and gloomy within. Craft arrived, craft departed. Those coming in brought slaves, servitors, heavy machinery and fuel. Saezar didn’t know what those leaving carried. The magos who had hired him had left him in no doubt that curiosity would lead to the termination of more than his contract. Saezar was smart enough to believe it. He and his staff kept their heads down and did their jobs. In another few years, the tech-priests would be done here. They had told him as much. He would go back to Jacero then, maybe buy a farm with the money he’d have saved, enjoy air that didn’t kill you on the first lungful.

That thought called up a memory Saezar would have given a lot to erase. Three weeks ago, a malfunction in one of the Bay Two extractors left an entire work crew breathing this planet’s lethal air. The bay’s vid-pictors had caught it all in fine detail, the way the technicians and slaves staggered in agony towards the emergency airlocks, clawing at their throats while blood streamed from their mouths, noses and eyes. Twenty-three men dead. It had taken only seconds, but Saezar knew the sight would be with him for life. He shook himself, trying to cast the memory off.

The Thunderhawk had passed beyond the outer pictors’ field of view. Saezar switched to Bay Four’s internal pictors and saw the big black craft settle heavily on its landing stanchions. Thrusters cooled. Turbines whined down towards silence. The outer doors of the landing bay clanged shut. Saezar hit the winking red rune on the top right of his board and flooded the bay with the proper nitrogen and oxygen mix. When his screen showed everything was in the green, he addressed the pilot of the Thunderhawk again.

‘Atmosphere restored, One-Seven-One. Bay Four secure. Free to debark.’

There was a brief grunt in answer. The Thunderhawk’s front ramp lowered. Yellow light spilled out from inside, illuminating the black metal grille of the bay floor. Shadows appeared in that light – big shadows – and, after a moment, the figures that cast them began to descend the ramp. Saezar leaned forwards, face close to his screen.

‘By the Throne,’ he whispered to himself.

With his right hand, he manipulated one of the bay vid-pictors by remote, zooming in on the figure striding in front. It was massive, armoured in black ceramite, its face hidden beneath a cold, expressionless helm. On one great pauldron, the left, Saezar saw the same skull icon that graced the ship’s prow. On the right, he saw another skull on a field of white, two black scythes crossed behind it. Here was yet another icon Saezar had never seen before, but he knew well enough the nature of the being that bore it. He had seen such beings rendered in paintings and stained glass, cut from marble or cast in precious metal. It was a figure of legend, and it was not alone.

Behind it, four others, similarly armour-clad but each bearing different iconography on their right pauldrons, marched in formation. Saezar’s heart was in his throat. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. He had never expected to see such beings with his own eyes. No one did. They were heroes from the stories his father had read to him, stories told to all children of the Imperium to give them hope, to help them sleep at night. Here they were in flesh and bone and metal.

Space Marines! Here! At Orga Station!

And there was a further incredible sight yet to come. Just as the five figures stepped onto the grille-work floor, something huge blotted out all the light from inside the craft. The Thunderhawk’s ramp shook with thunderous steps. Something incredible emerged on two stocky, piston-like legs. It was vast and angular and impossibly powerful-looking, like a walking tank with fists instead of cannon.

It was a Dreadnought, and, even among such legends as these, it was in a class of its own.

Saezar felt a flood of conflicting emotion, equal parts joy and dread.

The Space Marines had come to Menatar, and where they went, death followed.

‘Menatar,’ said the tiny hunched figure, more to himself than to any of the black-armoured giants he shared the pressurised mag-rail carriage with. ‘Second planet of the Ozyma-138 system, Hatha Subsector, Ultima Segmentum. Solar orbital period, one-point-one-three Terran standard. Gravity, zero-point-eight-three Terran standard.’ He looked up, his tiny black eyes meeting those of Siefer Zeed, the Raven Guard. ‘The atmosphere is a thick nitrogen-sulphide and carbon dioxide mix. Did you know that? Utterly deadly to the non-augmented. I doubt even you Adeptus Astartes could breathe it for long. Even our servitors wear air tanks here.’

Zeed stared back indifferently at the little tech-priest. When he spoke, it was not in answer. His words were directed to his right, to his squad leader, Lyandro Karras, Codicier Librarian of the Death Spectres Chapter, known officially in Deathwatch circles as Talon Alpha. That wasn’t what Zeed called him, though. ‘Tell me again, Scholar, why we get all the worthless jobs.’

Karras didn’t look up from the boltgun he was muttering litanies over. Times like these, the quiet times, were for meditation and proper observances, something the Raven Guard seemed wholly unable to grasp. Karras had spent six years as leader of this kill-team. Siefer Zeed, nicknamed Ghost for his alabaster skin, was as irreverent today as he had been when they’d first met. Perhaps he was even worse.

Karras finished murmuring his Litany of Flawless Operation and sighed. ‘You know why, Ghost. If you didn’t go out of your way to anger Sigma all the time, maybe those Scimitar bastards would be here instead of us.’

Talon Squad’s handler, an inquisitor lord known only as Sigma, had come all too close to dismissing Zeed from active duty on several occasions, a terrible dishonour not just for the Deathwatch member in question, but for his entire Chapter. Zeed frequently tested the limits of Sigma’s need-to-know policy, not to mention the inquisitor’s patience. But the Raven Guard was a peerless killing machine at close range, and his skill with a pair of lightning claws, his signature weapon, had won the day so often that Karras and the others had stopped counting.

Another voice spoke up, a deep rumbling bass, its tones warm and rich. ‘They’re not all bad,’ said Maximmion Voss of the Imperial Fists. ‘Scimitar Squad, I mean.’

‘Right,’ said Zeed with good-natured sarcasm. ‘It’s not like you’re biased, Omni. I mean, every Black Templar or Crimson Fist in the galaxy is a veritable saint.’

Voss grinned at that.

There was a hiss from the rear of the carriage where Ignatio Solarion and Darrion Rauth, Ultramarine and Exorcist respectively, sat in relative silence. The hiss had come from Solarion.

‘Something you want to say, Prophet?’ said Zeed with a challenging thrust of his chin.

Solarion scowled at him, displaying the full extent of his contempt for the Raven Guard. ‘We are with company,’ he said, indicating the little tech-priest who had fallen silent while the Deathwatch Space Marines talked. ‘You would do well to remember that.’

Zeed threw Solarion a sneer, then turned his eyes back to the tech-priest. The man had met them on the mag-rail platform at Orga Station, introducing himself as Magos Iapetus Borgovda, the most senior adept on the planet and a xeno-heirographologist specialising in the writings and history of the Exodites, offshoot cultures of the eldar race. They had lived here once, these Exodites, and had left many secrets buried deep in the drifting red sands.

That went no way to explaining why a Deathwatch kill-team was needed, however, especially now. Menatar was a dead world. Its sun had become a red giant, a K3-type star well on its way to final collapse. Before it died, however, it would burn off the last of Menatar’s atmosphere, leaving little more than a ball of molten rock. Shortly after that, Menatar would cool and there would be no trace of anyone ever having set foot here at all. Such an end was many tens of thousands of years away, of course. Had the Exodites abandoned this world early, knowing its eventual fate? Or had something else driven them off? Maybe the xeno-heirographologist would find the answers eventually, but that still didn’t tell Zeed anything about why Sigma had sent some of his key assets here.

Magos Borgovda turned to his left and looked out the viewspex bubble at the front of the mag-rail carriage. A vast dead volcano dominated the skyline. The mag-rail car sped towards it so fast the red dunes and rocky spires on either side of the tracks went by in a blur. ‘We are coming up on Typhonis Mons,’ the magos wheezed. ‘The noble Priesthood of Mars cut a tunnel straight through the side of the crater, you know. The journey will take another hour. No more than that. Without the tunnel–’

‘Good,’ interrupted Zeed, running the fingers of one gauntleted hand through his long black hair. His eyes flicked to the blades of the lightning claws fixed to the magnetic couplings on his thigh-plates. Soon it would be time to don the weapons properly, fix his helmet to its seals, and step out onto solid ground. Omni was tuning the suspensors on his heavy bolter. Solarion was checking the bolt mechanism of his sniper rifle. Karras and Rauth had both finished their final checks already.

If there is nothing here to fight, why were we sent so heavily armed? Zeed asked himself.

He thought of the ill-tempered Dreadnought riding alone in the other carriage.

And why did we bring Chyron?

The mag-rail carriage slowed to a smooth halt beside a platform cluttered with crates bearing the cog-and-skull mark of the Adeptus Mechanicus. On either side of the platform, spreading out in well-ordered concentric rows, were scores of stocky pre-fabricated huts and storage units, their low roofs piled with ash and dust. Thick insulated cables snaked everywhere, linking heavy machinery to generators; supplying light, heat and atmospheric stability to the sleeping quarters and mess blocks. Here and there, cranes stood tall against the wind. Looming over everything were the sides of the crater, penning it all in, lending the place a strange quality, almost like being outdoors and yet indoors at the same time.

Borgovda was clearly expected. Dozens of acolytes, robed in the red of the Martian Priesthood and fitted with breathing apparatus, bowed low when he emerged from the carriage. Around them, straight-backed skitarii troopers stood to attention with lasguns and hellguns clutched diagonally across their chests.

Quietly, Voss mumbled to Zeed, ‘It seems our new acquaintance didn’t lie about his status here. Perhaps you should have been more polite to him, paper-face.’

‘I don’t recall you offering any pleasantries, tree-trunk,’ Zeed replied. He and Voss had been friends since the moment they met. It was a rapport that none of the other kill-team members shared, a fact that only served to further deepen the bond. Had anyone else called Zeed paper-face, he might well have eviscerated them on the spot. Likewise, few would have dared to call the squat, powerful Voss tree-trunk. Even fewer would have survived to tell of it. But, between the two of them, such names were taken as a mark of trust and friendship that was truly rare among the Deathwatch.

Magos Borgovda broke from greeting the rows of fawning acolytes and turned to his black-armoured escorts. When he spoke, it was directly to Karras, who had identified himself as team leader during introductions.

‘Shall we proceed to the dig-site, lord? Or do you wish to rest first?’

‘Astartes need no rest,’ answered Karras flatly.

It was a slight exaggeration, of course, and the twinkle in the xeno-heirographologist’s eye suggested he knew as much, but he also knew that, by comparison to most humans, it was as good as true. Borgovda and his fellow servants of the Machine-God also required little rest.

‘Very well,’ said the magos. ‘Let us go straight to the pit. My acolytes tell me we are ready to initiate the final stage of our operation. They await only my command.’

He dismissed all but a few of the acolytes, issuing commands to them in sharp bursts of machine code language, and turned east. Leaving the platform behind them, the Deathwatch followed. Karras walked beside the bent and robed figure, consciously slowing his steps to match the speed of the tech-priest. The others, including the massive, multi-tonne form of the Dreadnought, Chyron, fell into step behind them. Chyron’s footfalls made the ground tremble as he brought up the rear.

Zeed cursed at having to walk so slowly. Why should one such as he, one who could move with inhuman speed, be forced to crawl at the little tech-priest’s pace? He might reach the dig-site in a fraction of the time and never break sweat. How long would it take at the speed of this grinding, clicking, wheezing half-mechanical magos?

Eager for distraction, he turned his gaze to the inner slopes of the great crater in which the entire excavation site was located. This was Typhonis Mons, the largest volcano in the Ozyma-138 system. No wonder the Adeptus Mechanicus had tunnelled all those kilometres through the crater wall. To go up and over the towering ridgeline would have taken significantly more time and effort. Any road built to do so would have required more switchbacks than was reasonable. The caldera was close to two and a half kilometres across, its jagged rim rising well over a kilometre on every side.

Looking more closely at the steep slopes all around him, Zeed saw that many bore signs of artifice. The signs were subtle, yes, perhaps eroded by time and wind, or by the changes in atmosphere that the expanding red giant had wrought, but they were there all the same. The Raven Guard’s enhanced visor-optics, working in accord with his superior gene-boosted vision, showed him crumbled doorways and pillared galleries.

Had he not known this world for an Exodite world, he might have passed these off as natural structures, for there was little angular about them. Angularity was something one saw everywhere in human construction, but far less so in the works of the hated, inexplicable eldar. Their structures, their craft, their weapons – each seemed almost grown rather than built, their forms fluid, gracefully organic. Like all righteous warriors of the Imperium, Zeed hated them. They denied man’s destiny as ruler of the stars. They stood in the way of expansion, of progress.

He had fought them many times. He had been there when forces had contested human territory in the Adiccan Reach, launching blisteringly fast raids on worlds they had no right to claim. They were good foes to fight. He enjoyed the challenge of their speed, and they were not afraid to engage with him at close quarters, though they often retreated in the face of his might rather than die honourably.

Cowards.

Such a shame they had left this world so long ago. He would have enjoyed fighting them here.

In fact, he thought, flexing his claws in irritation, just about any fight would do.

Six massive cranes struggled in unison to raise their load from the circular black pit in the centre of the crater. They had buried this thing deep – deep enough that no one should ever have disturbed it here. But Iapetus Borgovda had transcribed the records of that burial, records found on a damaged craft that had been lost in the warp only to emerge centuries later on the fringe of the Imperium. He had been on his way to present his findings to the Genetor Biologis himself when a senior magos by the name of Serjus Altando had intercepted him and asked him to present his findings to the Ordo Xenos of the Holy Inquisition first.

After that, Borgovda had never gotten around to presenting his work to his superiors on Mars. The mysterious inquisitor lord that Magos Altando served had guaranteed Borgovda all the resources he would need to make the discovery entirely his own. The credit, Altando promised, need not be shared with anyone else. Borgovda would be revered for his work. Perhaps, one day, he would even be granted genetor rank himself.

And so it was that mankind had come to Menatar and had begun to dig where no one was supposed to.

The fruits of that labour were finally close at hand. Borgovda’s black eyes glittered like coals beneath the clear bubble of his breathing apparatus as he watched each of the six cranes reel in their thick polysteel cables. With tantalising slowness, something huge and ancient began to peek above the lip of the pit. A hundred skitarii troopers and gun-servitors inched forwards, weapons raised. They had no idea what was emerging. Few did.

Borgovda knew. Magos Altando knew. Sigma knew. Of these three, however, only Borgovda was present in person. The others, he believed, were light years away. This was his prize alone, just as the inquisitor had promised. This was his operation. As more of the object cleared the lip of the pit, he stepped forwards himself. Behind him, the Space Marines of Talon Squad gripped their weapons and watched.

The object was almost entirely revealed now, a vast sarcophagus, oval in shape, twenty-three metres long on its vertical axis, sixteen metres on the horizontal. Every centimetre of its surface, a surface like nothing so much as polished bone, was intricately carved with script. By force of habit, the xeno-heirographologist began translating the symbols with part of his mind while the rest of it continued to marvel at the beauty of what he saw. Just what secrets would this object reveal?

He, and other Radicals like him, believed mankind’s salvation, its very future, lay not with the technological stagnation in which the race of men was currently mired, but with the act of understanding and embracing the technology of its alien enemies. And yet, so many fools scorned this patently obvious truth. Borgovda had known good colleagues, fine inquisitive magi like himself, who had been executed for their beliefs. Why did the Fabricator General not see it? Why did the mighty Lords of Terra not understand? Well, he would make them see. Sigma had promised him all the resources he would need to make the most of this discovery. The Holy Inquisition was on his side. This time would be different.

The object, fully raised above the pit, hung there in all its ancient, inscrutable glory. Borgovda gave a muttered command into a vox-piece, and the cranes began a slow, synchronised turn.

Borgovda held his breath.

They moved the vast sarcophagus over solid ground and stopped.

‘Yes,’ said Borgovda over the link. ‘That’s it. Now lower it gently.’

The crane crews did as ordered. Millimetre by millimetre, the oval tomb descended.

Then it lurched.

One of the cranes gave a screech of metal. Its frame twisted sharply to the right, titanium struts crumpling like tin.

‘What’s going on?’ demanded Borgovda.

From the corner of his vision, he noted the Deathwatch stepping forwards, cocking their weapons, and the Dreadnought eagerly flexing its great metal fists.

A panicked voice came back to him from the crane operator in the damaged machine. ‘There’s something moving inside that thing,’ gasped the man. ‘Something really heavy. Its centre of gravity is shifting all over the place!’

Borgovda’s eyes narrowed as he scrutinised the hanging oval object. It was swinging on five taut cables now, while the sixth, that of the ruined crane, had gone slack. The object lurched again. The movement was clearly visible this time, obviously generated by massive internal force.

‘Get it onto the ground,’ Borgovda barked over the link, ‘but carefully. Do not damage it.’

The cranes began spooling out more cable at his command, but the sarcophagus gave one final big lurch and crumpled two more of the sturdy machines. The other three cables tore free, and it fell to the ground with an impact that shook the closest slaves and acolytes from their feet.

Borgovda started towards the fallen sarcophagus, and knew that the Deathwatch were right behind him. Had the inquisitor known this might happen? Was that why he had sent his angels of death and destruction along?

Even at this distance, some one hundred and twenty metres away, even through all the dust and grit the impact had kicked up, Borgovda could see sigils begin to glow red on the surface of the massive object. They blinked on and off like warning lights, and he realised that was exactly what they were. Despite all the irreconcilable differences between the humans and the aliens, this message, at least, meant the same.

Danger!

There was a sound like cracking wood, but so loud it was deafening.

Suddenly, one of the Deathwatch Space Marines roared in agony and collapsed to his knees, gauntlets pressed tight to the side of his helmet. Another Adeptus Astartes, the Imperial Fist, raced forwards to his fallen leader’s side.

‘What’s the matter, Scholar? What’s going on?’

The one called Karras spoke through his pain, but there was no mistaking the sound of it, the raw, nerve-searing agony in his words. ‘A psychic beacon!’ he growled through clenched teeth. ‘A psychic beacon just went off. The magnitude–’

He howled as another wave of pain hit him, and the sound spoke of a suffering that Borgovda could hardly imagine.

Another of the kill-team members, this one with a pauldron boasting a daemon’s skull design, stepped forwards with boltgun raised and, incredibly, took aim at his leader’s head.

The Raven Guard moved like lightning. Almost too fast to see, he was at this other’s side, knocking the muzzle of the boltgun up and away with the back of his forearm. ‘What the hell are you doing, Watcher?’ Zeed snapped. ‘Stand down!’

The Exorcist, Rauth, glared at Zeed through his helmet visor, but he turned his weapon away all the same. His finger, however, did not leave the trigger.

‘Scholar,’ said Voss. ‘Can you fight it? Can you fight through it?’

The Death Spectre struggled to his feet, but his posture said he was hardly in any shape to fight if he had to. ‘I’ve never felt anything like this!’ he hissed. ‘We have to knock it out. It’s smothering my… gift.’ He turned to Borgovda. ‘What in the Emperor’s name is going on here, magos?’

‘Gift?’ spat Rauth in an undertone.

Borgovda answered, turning his black eyes back to the object as he did. It was on its side about twenty metres from the edge of the pit, rocking violently as if something were alive inside it.

‘The Exodites…’ he said. ‘They must have set up some kind of signal to alert them when someone… interfered. We’ve just set it off.’

‘Interfered with what?’ demanded Ignatio Solarion. The Ultramarine rounded on the tiny tech-priest. ‘Answer me!’

There was another loud cracking sound. Borgovda looked beyond Solarion and saw the bone-like surface of the sarcophagus split violently. Pieces shattered and flew off. In the gaps they left, something huge and dark writhed and twisted, desperate to be free.

The magos was transfixed.

‘I asked you a question!’ Solarion barked, visibly fighting to restrain himself from striking the magos. ‘What does the beacon alert them to?’

‘To that,’ said Borgovda, terrified and exhilarated all at once. ‘To the release of… of whatever they buried here.’

‘They left it alive?’ said Voss, drawing abreast of Solarion and Borgovda, his heavy bolter raised and ready.

Suddenly, everything slotted into place. Borgovda had the full context of the writing he had deciphered on the sarcophagus’s surface, and, with that context, came a new understanding.

‘They buried it,’ he told Talon Squad, ‘because they couldn’t kill it!’

There was a shower of bony pieces as the creature finally broke free of the last of its tomb and stretched its massive serpentine body for all to see. It was as tall as a Warhound Titan, and, from the look of it, almost as well armoured. Complex mouthparts split open like the bony, razor-lined petals of some strange, lethal flower. Its bizarre jaws dripped with corrosive fluids. This beast, this nightmare leviathan pulled from the belly of the earth, shivered and threw back its gargantuan head.

A piercing shriek filled the poisonous air, so loud that some of the skitarii troopers closest to it fell down, choking on the deadly atmosphere. The creature’s screech had shattered their visors.

‘Well maybe they couldn’t kill it,’ growled Lyandro Karras, marching stoically forwards through waves of psychic pain, ‘But we will! To battle, brothers, in the Emperor’s name!’

Searing lances of las-fire erupted from all directions at once, centring on the massive worm-like creature that was, after so many long millennia, finally free. Normal men would have quailed in the face of such an overwhelming foe. What could such tiny things as humans do against something like this? But the skitarii troopers of the Adeptus Mechanicus had been rendered all but fearless, their survival instincts overridden by neural programming, augmentation and brain surgery. They did not flee as other men would have. They surrounded the beast, working as one to put as much firepower on it as possible.

A brave effort, but ultimately a wasted one. The creature’s thick plates of alien chitin shrugged off their assault. All that concentrated firepower really achieved was to turn the beast’s attention on its attackers. Though sightless in the conventional sense, it sensed everything. Rows of tiny cyst-like nodules running the length of its body detected changes in heat, air pressure and vibration to the most minute degree. It knew exactly where each of its attackers stood. Not only could it hear their beating hearts, it could feel them vibrating through the ground and the air. Nothing escaped its notice.

With incredible speed for a creature so vast, it whipped its heavy black tail forwards in an arc. The air around it whistled. Skitarii troopers were cut down like stalks of wheat, crushed by the dozen, their rib cages pulverised. Some were launched into the air, their bodies falling like mortar shells a second later, slamming down with fatal force onto the corrugated metal roofs of the nearby storage and accommodation huts.

Talon Squad was already racing forwards to join the fight. Chyron’s awkward run caused crates to fall from their stacks. Adrenaline flooded the wretched remains of his organic body, a tiny remnant of the Astartes he had once been, little more now than brain, organs and scraps of flesh held together, kept alive, by the systems of his massive armoured chassis.

‘Death to all xenos!’ he roared, following close behind the others.

At the head of the team, Karras ran with his bolter in hand. The creature was three hundred metres away, but he and his squadmates would close that gap all too quickly. What would they do then? How did one fight a monster like this?

There was a voice on the link. It was Voss.

‘A trygon, Scholar? A mawloc?’

‘No, Omni,’ replied Karras. ‘Same genus, I think, but something we haven’t seen before.’

‘Sigma knew,’ said Zeed, breaking in on the link.

‘Aye,’ said Karras. ‘Knew or suspected.’

‘Karras,’ said Solarion. ‘I’m moving to high ground.’

‘Go.’

Solarion’s bolt-rifle, a superbly-crafted weapon, its like unseen in the armouries of any Adeptus Astartes Chapter but the Deathwatch, was best employed from a distance. The Ultramarine broke away from the charge of the others. He sought out the tallest structure in the crater that he could reach quickly. His eyes found it almost immediately. It was behind him – the loading crane that served the mag-rail line. It was slightly shorter than the cranes that had been used to lift the entombed creature out of the pit, but each of those were far too close to the beast to be useful. This one would do well. He ran to the foot of the crane, to the stanchions that were steam-bolted to the ground, slung his rifle over his right pauldron, and began to climb.

The massive tyranid worm was scything its tail through more of the skitarii, and their numbers dropped to half. Bloody smears marked the open concrete. For all their fearlessness and tenacity, the Mechanicus troops hadn’t even scratched the blasted thing. All they had managed was to put the beast in a killing frenzy at the cost of their own lives. Still they fought, still they poured blinding spears of fire on it, but to no avail. The beast flexed again, tail slashing forwards, and another dozen died, their bodies smashed to a red pulp.

‘I hope you’ve got a plan, Scholar,’ said Zeed as he ran beside his leader. ‘Other than kill the bastard, I mean.’

‘I can’t channel psychic energy into Arquemann,’ said Karras, thinking for a moment that his ancient force sword might be the only thing able to crack the brute’s armoured hide. ‘Not with that infernal beacon drowning me out. But if we can stop the beacon… If I can get close enough–’

He was cut off by a calm, cold and all-too-familiar voice on the link.

‘Specimen Six is not to be killed under any circumstances, Talon Alpha. I want the creature alive!’

‘Sigma!’ spat Karras. ‘You can’t seriously think… No! We’re taking it down. We have to!’

Sigma broadcast his voice to the entire team.

‘Listen to me, Talon Squad. That creature is to be taken alive at all costs. Restrain it and prepare it for transport. Brother Solarion has been equipped for the task already. Your job is to facilitate the success of his shot, then escort the tranquilised creature back to the Saint Nevarre. Remember your oaths. Do as you are bid.’

It was Chyron, breaking his characteristic brooding silence, who spoke up first.

‘This is an outrage, Sigma. It is a tyranid abomination and Chyron will kill it. We are Deathwatch. Killing things is what we do.’

‘You will do as ordered, Lamenter. All of you will. Remember your oaths. Honour the treaties, or return to your brothers in disgrace.’

‘I have no brothers left,’ Chyron snarled, as if this freed him from the need to obey.

‘Then you will return to nothing. The Inquisition has no need of those who cannot follow mission parameters. The Deathwatch even less so.’

Karras, getting close to the skitarii and the foe, felt his lip curl in anger. This was madness.

‘Solarion,’ he barked, ‘how much did you know?’

‘Some,’ said the Ultramarine, a trace of something unpleasant in his voice. ‘Not much.’

‘And you didn’t warn us, brother?’ Karras demanded.

‘Orders, Karras. Unlike some, I follow mine to the letter.’

Solarion had never been happy operating under the Death Spectre Librarian’s command. Karras was from a Chapter of the Thirteenth Founding. To Solarion, that made him inferior. Only the Chapters of the First Founding were worthy of unconditional respect, and even some of those…

‘Magos Altando issued me with special rounds,’ Solarion went on. ‘Neuro-toxins. I need a clear shot on a soft, fleshy area. Get me that opening, Karras, and Sigma will have what he wants.’

Karras swore under his helm. He had known all along that something was up. His psychic gift did not extend to prescience, but he had sensed something dark and ominous hanging over them from the start.

The tyranid worm was barely fifty metres away now, and it turned its plated head straight towards the charging Deathwatch Space Marines. It could hardly have missed the thundering footfalls of Chyron, who was another thirty metres behind Karras, unable to match the swift pace of his smaller, lighter squadmates.

‘The plan, Karras!’ said Zeed, voice high and anxious.

Karras had to think fast. The beast lowered its fore-sections and began slithering towards them, sensing these newcomers were a far greater threat than the remaining skitarii.

Karras skidded to an abrupt halt next to a skitarii sergeant and shouted at him, ‘You! Get your forces out. Fall back towards the mag-rail station.’

‘We fight,’ insisted the skitarii. ‘Magos Borgovda has not issued the command to retreat.’

Karras grabbed the man by the upper right arm and almost lifted him off his feet. ‘This isn’t fighting. This is dying. You will do as I say. The Deathwatch will take care of this. Do not get in our way.’

The sergeant’s eyes were blank lifeless things, like those of a doll. Had the Adeptus Mechanicus surgically removed so much of the man’s humanity? There was no fear there, certainly, but Karras sensed little else, either. Whether that was because of the surgeries or because the beacon was still drowning him in wave after invisible wave of pounding psychic pressure, he could not say.

After a second, the skitarii sergeant gave a reluctant nod and sent a message over his vox-link. The skitarii began falling back, but they kept their futile fire up as they moved.

The rasping of the worm’s armour plates against the rockcrete grew louder as it neared, and Karras turned again to face it. ‘Get ready!’ he told the others.

‘What is your decision, Death Spectre?’ Chyron rumbled. ‘It is a xenos abomination. It must be killed, regardless of the inquisitor’s command.’

Damn it, thought Karras. I know he’s right, but I must honour the treaties, for the sake of the Chapter. We must give Solarion his window.

‘Keep the beast occupied. Do as Sigma commands. If Solarion’s shot fails…’

‘It won’t,’ said Solarion over the link.

It had better not, thought Karras. Because, if it does, I’m not sure we can kill this thing.

Solarion had reached the end of the crane’s armature. The entire crater floor was spread out below him. He saw his fellow Talon members fan out to face the alien abomination. It reared up on its hind-sections again and screeched at them, thrashing the air with rows of tiny vestigial limbs. Voss opened up on it first, showering it with a hail of fire from his heavy bolter. Rauth and Karras followed suit while Zeed and Chyron tried to flank it and approach from the sides.

Solarion snorted.

It was obvious, to him at least, that the fiend didn’t have any blind spots. It didn’t have eyes!

So far as Solarion could tell from up here, the furious fusillade of bolter rounds rattling off the beast’s hide was doing nothing at all, unable to penetrate the thick chitin plates.

I need exposed flesh, he told himself. I won’t fire until I get it. One shot, one kill. Or, in this case, one paralysed xenos worm.

He locked himself into a stable position by pushing his boots into the corners created by the crane’s metal frame. All around him, the winds of Menatar howled and tugged, trying to pull him into a deadly eighty metre drop. The dust on those winds cut visibility by twenty per cent, but Solarion had hit targets the size of an Imperial ducat at three kilometres. He knew he could pull off a perfect shot in far worse conditions than these.

Sniping from the top of the crane meant that he was forced to lie belly-down at a forty-five degree angle, his bolt-rifle’s stock braced against his shoulder, right visor-slit pressed close to the lens of his scope. After some adjustments, the writhing monstrosity came into sharp focus. Bursts of Astartes gunfire continued to ripple over its carapace. Its tail came down hard in a hammering vertical stroke that Rauth only managed to sidestep at the last possible second. The concrete where the Exorcist had been standing shattered and flew off in all directions.

Solarion pulled back the cocking lever of his weapon and slid one of Altando’s neuro-toxin rounds into the chamber. Then he spoke over the comm-link.

‘I’m in position, Karras. Ready to take the shot. Hurry up and get me that opening.’

‘We’re trying, Prophet!’ Karras snapped back, using the nickname Zeed had coined for the Ultramarine.

Try harder, thought Solarion, but he didn’t say it. There was a limit, he knew, to how far he could push Talon Alpha.

Three grenades detonated, one after another, with ground-splintering cracks. The wind pulled the dust and debris aside. The creature reared up again, towering over the Space Marines, and they saw that it remained utterly undamaged, not even a scratch on it.

‘Nothing!’ cursed Rauth.

Karras swore. This was getting desperate. The monster was tireless, its speed undiminished, and nothing they did seemed to have the least effect. By contrast, its own blows were all too potent. It had already struck Voss aside. Luck had been with the Imperial Fist, however. The blow had been lateral, sending him twenty metres along the ground before slamming him into the side of a fuel silo. The strength of his ceramite armour had saved his life. Had the blow been vertical, it would have killed him on the spot.

Talon Squad hadn’t survived the last six years of special operations to die here on Menatar. Karras wouldn’t allow it. But the only weapon they had which might do anything to the monster was his force blade, Arquemann, and, with that accursed beacon drowning out his gift, Karras couldn’t charge it with the devastating psychic power it needed to do the job.

‘Warp blast it!’ he cursed over the link. ‘Someone find the source of that psychic signal and knock it out!’

He couldn’t pinpoint it himself. The psychic bursts were overwhelming, drowning out all but his own thoughts. He could no longer sense Zeed’s spiritual essence, nor that of Voss, Chryon, or Solarion. As for Rauth, he had never been able to sense the Exorcist’s soul. Even after serving together this long, he was no closer to discovering the reason for that. For all Karras knew, maybe the quiet, brooding Astartes had no soul.

Zeed was doing his best to keep the tyranid’s attention on himself. He was the fastest of all of them. If Karras hadn’t known better, he might even have said Zeed was enjoying the deadly game. Again and again, that barbed black tail flashed at the Raven Guard, and, every time, found only empty air. Zeed kept himself a split second ahead. Whenever he was close enough, he lashed out with his lightning claws and raked the creature’s sides. But, despite the blue sparks that flashed with every contact, he couldn’t penetrate that incredible armour.

Karras locked his bolter to his thigh plate and drew Arquemann from its scabbard.

This is it, he thought. We have to close with it. Maybe Chyron can do something if he can get inside its guard. He’s the only one who might just be strong enough.

‘Engage at close quarters,’ he told the others. ‘We can’t do anything from back here.’

It was all the direction Chyron needed. The Dreadnought loosed a battle-cry and stormed forwards to attack with his two great power fists, the ground juddering under him as he charged.

By the Emperor’s grace, thought Karras, following in the Dreadnought’s thunderous wake, don’t let this be the day we lose someone.

Talon Squad was his squad. Despite the infighting, the secrets, the mistrust and everything else, that still meant something.

Solarion saw the rest of the kill-team race forwards to engage the beast at close quarters and did not envy them, but he had to admit a grudging pride in their bravery and honour. Such a charge looked like sure suicide. For any other squad, it might well have been. But for Talon Squad…

Concentrate, he told himself. The moment is at hand. Breathe slowly.

He did.

His helmet filtered the air, removing the elements that might have killed him, elements that even the Adeptus Astartes implant known as the Imbiber, or the multi-lung, would not have been able to handle. Still, the air tasted foul and burned in his nostrils and throat. A gust of wind buffeted him, throwing his aim off a few millimetres, forcing him to adjust again.

A voice shouted triumphantly on the link.

‘I’ve found it, Scholar. I have the beacon!’

‘Voss?’ said Karras.

There was a muffled crump, the sound of a krak grenade. Solarion’s eyes flicked from his scope to a cloud of smoke about fifty metres to the creature’s right. He saw Voss emerge from the smoke. Around him lay the rubble of the monster’s smashed sarcophagus.

Karras gave a roar of triumph.

‘It’s… it’s gone,’ he said. ‘It’s lifted. I can feel it!’

So Karras would be able to wield his psychic abilities again. Would it make any difference, Solarion wondered.

It did, and that difference was immediate. Something began to glow down on the battlefield. Solarion turned his eyes towards it and saw Karras raise Arquemann in a two-handed grip. The monster must have sensed the sudden build-up of psychic charge, too. It thrashed its way towards the Librarian, eager to crush him under its powerful coils. Karras dashed in to meet the creature’s huge body and plunged his blade into a crease where two sections of chitin plate met.

An ear-splitting alien scream tore through the air, echoing off the crater walls.

Karras twisted the blade hard and pulled it free, and its glowing length was followed by a thick gush of black ichor.

The creature writhed in pain, reared straight up and screeched again, its complex jaws open wide.

Just the opening Solarion was waiting for.

He squeezed the trigger of his rifle and felt it kick powerfully against his armoured shoulder.

A single white-hot round lanced out towards the tyranid worm.

There was a wet impact as the round struck home, embedding itself deep in the fleshy tissue of the beast’s mouth.

‘Direct hit!’ Solarion reported.

‘Good work,’ said Karras on the link. ‘Now what?’

It was Sigma’s voice that answered. ‘Fall back and wait. The toxin is fast acting. Ten to fifteen seconds. Specimen Six will be completely paralysed.’

‘You heard him, Talon Squad,’ said Karras. ‘Fall back. Let’s go!’

Solarion placed one hand on the top of his rifle, muttered a prayer of thanks to the weapon’s machine spirit, and prepared to descend. As he looked out over the crater floor, however, he saw that one member of the kill-team wasn’t retreating.

Karras had seen it, too.

‘Chyron,’ barked the team leader. ‘What in Terra’s name are you doing?

The Dreadnought was standing right in front of the beast, fending off blows from its tail and its jaws with his oversized fists.

‘Stand down, Lamenter,’ Sigma commanded.

If Chyron heard, he deigned not to answer. While there was still a fight to be had here, he wasn’t going anywhere. It was the tyranids that had obliterated his Chapter. Hive Fleet Kraken had decimated them, leaving him with no brothers, no home to return to. But if Sigma and the others thought the Deathwatch was all Chyron had left, they were wrong. He had his rage, his fury, his unquenchable lust for dire and bloody vengeance.

The others should have known that. Sigma should have known.

Karras started back towards the Dreadnought, intent on finding some way to reach him. He would use his psyker gifts if he had to. Chyron could not hope to beat the thing alone.

But, as the seconds ticked off and the Dreadnought continued to fight, it became clear that something was wrong.

From his high vantage point, it was Solarion who voiced it first.

‘It’s not stopping,’ he said over the link. ‘Sigma, the damned thing isn’t even slowing down. The neuro-toxin didn’t work.’

‘Impossible,’ replied the voice of the inquisitor. ‘Magos Altando had the serum tested on–’

‘Twenty-five… no, thirty seconds. I tell you, it’s not working.’

Sigma was silent for a brief moment. Then he said, ‘We need it alive.’

‘Why?’ demanded Zeed. The Raven Guard was crossing the concrete again, back towards the fight, following close behind Karras.

‘You do not need to know,’ said Sigma.

‘The neuro-toxin doesn’t work, Sigma,’ Solarion repeated. ‘If you have some other suggestion…’

Sigma clicked off.

I guess he doesn’t, thought Solarion sourly.

‘Solarion,’ said Karras. ‘Can you put another round in it?’

‘Get it to open wide and you know I can. But it might not be a dosage issue.’

‘I know,’ said Karras, his anger and frustration telling in his voice. ‘But it’s all we’ve got. Be ready.’

Chyron’s chassis was scraped and dented. His foe’s strength seemed boundless. Every time the barbed tail whipped forwards, Chyron swung his fists at it, but the beast was truly powerful and, when one blow connected squarely with the Dreadnought’s thick glacis plate, he found himself staggering backwards despite his best efforts.

Karras was suddenly at his side.

‘When I tell you to fall back, Dreadnought, you will do it,’ growled the Librarian. ‘I’m still Talon Alpha. Or does that mean nothing to you?’

Chyron steadied himself and started forwards again, saying, ‘I honour your station, Death Spectre, and your command. But vengeance for my Chapter supersedes all. Sigma be damned, I will kill this thing!’

Karras hefted Arquemann and prepared to join Chyron’s charge. ‘Would you dishonour all of us with you?’

The beast swivelled its head towards them and readied to strike again.

‘For the vengeance of my Chapter, no price is too high. I am sorry, Alpha, but that is how it must be.’

‘Then the rest of Talon Squad stands with you,’ said Karras. ‘Let us hope we all live to regret it.’

Solarion managed to put two further toxic rounds into the creature’s mouth in rapid succession, but it was futile. This hopeless battle was telling badly on the others now. Each slash of that deadly tail was avoided by a rapidly narrowing margin. Against a smaller and more numerous foe, the strength of the Adeptus Astartes would have seemed almost infinite, but this towering tyranid leviathan was far too powerful to engage with the weapons they had. They were losing this fight, and yet Chyron would not abandon it, and the others would not abandon him, despite the good sense that might be served in doing so.

Voss tried his best to keep the creature occupied at range, firing great torrents from his heavy bolter, even knowing that he could do little, if any, real damage. His fire, however, gave the others just enough openings to keep fighting. Still, even the heavy ammunition store on the Imperial Fist’s back had its limits. Soon, the weapon’s thick belt feed began whining as it tried to cycle non-existent rounds into the chamber.

‘I’m out,’ Voss told them. He started disconnecting the heavy weapon so that he might draw his combat blade and join the close-quarters melee.

It was at that precise moment, however, that Zeed, who had again been taunting the creature with his lightning claws, had his feet struck out from under him. He went down hard on his back, and the tyranid monstrosity launched itself straight towards him, massive mandibles spread wide.

For an instant, Zeed saw that huge red maw descending towards him. It looked like a tunnel of dark, wet flesh. Then a black shape blocked his view and he heard a mechanical grunt of strain.

‘I’m more of a meal, beast,’ growled Chyron.

The Dreadnought had put himself directly in front of Zeed at the last minute, gripping the tyranid’s sharp mandibles in his unbreakable titanium grip. But the creature was impossibly heavy, and it pressed down on the Lamenter with all its weight.

The force pressing down on Chyron was impossible to fight, but he put everything he had into the effort. His squat, powerful legs began to buckle. A piston in his right leg snapped. His engine began to sputter and cough with the strain.

‘Get out from under me, Raven Guard,’ he barked. ‘I can’t hold it much longer!’

Zeed scrabbled backwards about two metres, then stopped.

No, he told himself. Not today. Not to a mindless beast like this.

‘Corax protect me,’ he muttered, then sprang to his feet and raced forwards, shouting, ‘Victoris aut mortis!’

Victory or death!

He slipped beneath the Dreadnought’s right arm, bunched his legs beneath him and, with lightning claws extended out in front, dived directly into the beast’s gaping throat.

‘Ghost!’ shouted Voss and Karras at the same time, but he was already gone from sight and there was no reply over the link.

Chyron wrestled on for another second. Then two. Then, suddenly, the monster began thrashing in great paroxysms of agony. It wrenched its mandibles from Chyron’s grip and flew backwards, pounding its ringed segments against the concrete so hard that great fractures appeared in the ground.

The others moved quickly back to a safe distance and watched in stunned silence.

It took a long time to die.

When the beast was finally still, Voss sank to his knees.

‘No,’ he said, but he was so quiet that the others almost missed it.

Footsteps sounded on the stone behind them. It was Solarion. He stopped alongside Karras and Rauth.

‘So much for taking it alive,’ he said.

No one answered.

Karras couldn’t believe it had finally happened. He had lost one. After all they had been through together, he had started to believe they might all return to their Chapters alive one day, to be welcomed as honoured heroes, with the sad exception of Chyron, of course.

Suddenly, however, that belief seemed embarrassingly naïve. If Zeed could die, all of them could. Even the very best of the best would meet his match in the end. Statistically, most Deathwatch members never made it back to the fortress-monasteries of their originating Chapters. Today, Zeed had joined those fallen ranks.

It was Sigma, breaking in on the command channel, who shattered the grim silence.

‘You have failed me, Talon Squad. It seems I greatly overestimated you.’

Karras hissed in quiet anger. ‘Siefer Zeed is dead, inquisitor.’

‘Then you, Alpha, have failed on two counts. The Chapter Master of the Raven Guard will be notified of Zeed’s failure. Those of you who live will at least have a future chance to redeem yourselves. The Imperium has lost a great opportunity here. I have no more to say to you. Stand by for Magos Altando.’

‘Altando?’ said Karras. ‘Why would–’

Sigma signed off before Karras could finish, his voice soon replaced by the buzzing mechanical tones of the old magos who served on his retinue.

‘I am told that Specimen Six is dead,’ he grated over the link. ‘Most regrettable, but your chances of success were extremely slim from the beginning. I predicted failure at close to ninety-six point eight five per cent probability.’

‘But Sigma deployed us anyway,’ Karras seethed. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

‘All is not lost,’ Altando continued, ignoring the Death Spectre’s ire. ‘There is much still to be learned from the carcass. Escort it back to Orga Station. I will arrive there to collect it shortly.’

‘Wait,’ snapped Karras. ‘You wish this piece of tyranid filth loaded up and shipped back for extraction? Are you aware of its size?’

‘Of course, I am,’ answered Altando. ‘It is what the mag-rail line was built for. In fact, everything we did on Menatar from the very beginning – the construction, the excavation, the influx of Mechanicus personnel – all of it was to secure the specimen alive, still trapped inside its sarcophagus. Under the circumstances, we will make do with a dead one. You have given us no choice.’

The sound of approaching footsteps caught Karras’s attention. He turned from the beast’s slumped form and saw the xeno-heirographologist, Magos Borgovda, walking towards him with a phalanx of surviving skitarii troopers and robed Mechanicus acolytes.

Beneath the plex bubble of his helm, the little tech-priest’s eyes were wide.

‘You… you bested it. I would not have believed it possible. You have achieved what the Exodites could not.’

‘Ghost bested it,’ said Voss. ‘This is his kill. His and Chyron’s.’

If Chyron registered these words, he didn’t show it. The ancient warrior stared fixedly at his fallen foe.

‘Magos Borgovda,’ said Karras heavily, ‘are there men among your survivors who can work the cranes? This carcass is to be loaded onto a mag-rail car and taken to Orga Station.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Borgovda, his eyes taking in the sheer size of the creature. ‘That part of our plans has not changed, at least.’

Karras turned in the direction of the mag-rail station and started walking. He knew he sounded tired and miserable when he said, ‘Talon Squad, fall in.’

‘Wait,’ said Chyron. He limped forwards with a clashing and grinding of the gears in his right leg. ‘I swear it, Alpha. The creature just moved. Perhaps it is not dead, after all.’

He clenched his fists as if in anticipation of crushing the last vestiges of life from it. But, as he stepped closer to the creature’s slack mouth, there was a sudden outpouring of thick black gore, a great torrent of it. It splashed over his feet and washed across the dry rocky ground.

In that flood of gore was a bulky form, a form with great rounded pauldrons, sharp claws, and a distinctive, back-mounted generator. It lay unmoving in the tide of ichor.

‘Ghost,’ said Karras quietly. He had hoped never to see this, one under his command lying dead.

Then the figure stirred and groaned.

‘If we ever fight a giant alien worm again,’ said the croaking figure over the comm-link, ‘some other bastard can jump down its throat. I’ve had my turn.’

Solarion gave a sharp laugh. Voss’s reaction was immediate. He strode forwards and hauled his friend up, clapping him hard on the shoulders. ‘Why would any of us bother when you’re so good at it, paper-face?’

Karras could hear the relief in Voss’s voice. He grinned under his helm. Maybe Talon Squad was blessed after all. Maybe they would live to return to their Chapters.

‘I said fall in, Deathwatch,’ he barked at them; then he turned and led them away.

Altando’s lifter had already docked at Orga Station by the time the mag-rail cars brought Talon Squad, the dead beast and the Mechanicus survivors to the facility. Sigma himself was, as always, nowhere to be seen. That was standard practice for the inquisitor. Six years, and Karras had still never met his enigmatic handler. He doubted he ever would.

Derlon Saezar and the station staff had been warned to stay well away from the mag-rail platforms and loading bays and to turn off all internal vid-pictors. Saezar was smarter than most people gave him credit for. He did exactly as he was told. No knowledge was worth the price of his life.

Magos Altando surveyed the tyranid’s long body with an appraising lens before ordering it loaded onto the lifter, a task with which even his veritable army of servitor slaves had some trouble. Magos Borgovda was most eager to speak with him, but, for some reason, Altando acted as if the xeno-heirographologist barely existed. In the end, Borgovda became irate and insisted that the other magos answer his questions at once. Why was he being told nothing? This was his discovery. Great promises had been made. He demanded the respect he was due.

It was at this point, with everyone gathered in Bay One, the only bay in the station large enough to offer a berth to Altando’s lifter, that Sigma addressed Talon Squad over the comm-link command channel once again.

‘No witnesses,’ he said simply.

Karras was hardly surprised. Again, this was standard operating procedure, but that didn’t mean the Death Spectre had to like it. It went against every bone in his body. Wasn’t the whole point of the Deathwatch to protect mankind? They were alien-hunters. His weapons hadn’t been crafted to take the lives of loyal Imperial citizens, no matter who gave the command.

‘Clarify,’ said Karras, feigning momentary confusion.

There was a crack of thunder, a single bolter-shot. Magos Borgovda’s head exploded in a red haze.

Darrion Rauth stood over the body, dark grey smoke rising from the muzzle of his bolter

‘Clear enough for you, Karras?’ said the Exorcist.

Karras felt anger surging up inside him. He might even have lashed out at Rauth, might have grabbed him by the gorget, but the reaction of the surviving skitarii troopers put a stop to that. Responding to the cold-blooded slaughter of their leader, they raised their weapons and aimed straight at the Exorcist.

What followed was a one-sided massacre that made Karras sick to his stomach.

When it was over, Sigma had his wish.

There were no witnesses left to testify that anything at all had been dug up from the crater on Menatar. All that remained was the little spaceport station and its staff, waiting to be told that the excavation was over and that their time on this inhospitable world was finally at an end.

Saezar watched the big lifter take off first, and marvelled at it. Even on his slightly fuzzy vid-monitor screen, the craft was an awe-inspiring sight. It emerged from the doors of Bay One with so much thrust that he thought it might rip the whole station apart, but the facility’s integrity held. There were no pressure leaks, no accidents.

The way that great ship hauled its heavy form up into the sky and off beyond the clouds thrilled him. Such power! It was a joy and an honour to see it. He wondered what it must be like to pilot such a ship.

Soon, the black Thunderhawk was also ready to leave. He granted the smaller, sleeker craft clearance and opened the doors of Bay Four once again. Good air out, bad air in. The Thunderhawk’s thrusters powered up. It soon emerged into the light of the Menatarian day, angled its nose upwards, and began to pull away.

Watching it go, Saezar felt a sense of relief that surprised him. The Adeptus Astartes were leaving. He had expected to feel some kind of sadness, perhaps even regret at not getting to meet them in person. But he felt neither of those things. There was something terrible about them. He knew that now. It was something none of the bedtime stories had ever conveyed.

As he watched the Thunderhawk climb, Saezar reflected on it, and discovered that he knew what it was. The Astartes, the Space Marines… they didn’t radiate goodness or kindness like the stories pretended. They were not so much righteous and shining champions as they were dark avatars of destruction. Aye, he was glad to see the back of them. They were the living embodiment of death. He hoped he would never set eyes on such beings again. Was there any greater reminder that the galaxy was a terrible and deadly place?

‘That’s right,’ he said quietly to the vid-image of the departing Thunderhawk. ‘Fly away. We don’t need angels of death here. Better you remain a legend only if the truth is so grim.’

And then he saw something that made him start forwards, eyes wide.

It was as if the great black bird of prey had heard his words. It veered sharply left, turning back towards the station.

Saezar stared at it, wordless, confused.

There was a burst of bright light from the battle-cannon on the craft’s back. A cluster of dark, slim shapes burst forwards from the under-wing pylons, each trailing a bright ribbon of smoke.

Missiles!

‘No!’

Saezar would have said more, would have cried out to the Emperor for salvation, but the roof of the operations centre was ripped apart in the blast. Even if the razor sharp debris hadn’t cut his body into a dozen wet red pieces, the rush of choking Menatarian air would have eaten him from the inside out.

‘No witnesses,’ Sigma had said.

Within minutes, Orga Station was obliterated, and there were none.

Days passed.

The only thing stirring within the crater was the skirts of dust kicked up by gusting winds. Ozyma-138 loomed vast and red in the sky above, continuing its work of slowly blasting away the planet’s atmosphere. With the last of the humans gone, this truly was a dead place once again, and that was how the visitors, or rather returnees, found it.

There were three of them, and they had been called here by a powerful beacon that only psychically gifted individuals might detect. It was a beacon that had gone strangely silent just shortly after it had been activated. The visitors had come to find out why.

They were far taller than the men of the Imperium, and their limbs were long and straight. The human race might have thought them elegant once, but all the killings these slender beings had perpetrated against mankind had put a permanent end to that. To the modern Imperium, they were simply xenos, to be hated and feared and destroyed like any other.

They descended the rocky sides of the crater in graceful silence, their booted feet causing only the slightest of rockslides. When they reached the bottom, they stepped onto the crater floor and marched together towards the centre where the mouth of the great pit gaped.

There was nothing hurried about their movements, and yet they covered the distance at an impressive speed.

The one who walked at the front of the trio was taller than the others, and not just by virtue of the high, jewel-encrusted crest on his helmet. He wore a rich cloak of strange shimmering material and carried a golden staff that shone with its own light.

The others were dressed in dark armour sculpted to emphasise the sweep of their long, lean muscles. They were armed with projectile weapons as white as bone. When the tall, cloaked figure stopped by the edge of the great pit, they stopped, too, and turned to either side, watchful, alert to any danger that might remain here.

The cloaked leader looked down into the pit for a moment, then moved off through the ruins of the excavation site, glancing at the crumpled metal huts and the rusting cranes as he passed them.

He stopped by a body on the ground, one of many. It was a pathetic, filthy mess of a thing, little more than rotting meat and broken bone wrapped in dust-caked cloth. It looked like it had been crushed by something. Pulverised. On the cloth was an icon – a skull set within a cog, equal parts black and white. For a moment, the tall figure looked down at it in silence, then he turned to the others and spoke, his voice filled with a boundless contempt that made even the swollen red sun seem to draw away.

‘Mon-keigh,’ he said, and the word was like a bitter poison on his tongue.

Mon-keigh.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2011 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Hardy Fowler

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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;

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* 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.