Further tales of the Space Marines

DEATHWATCH
A Talon Squad novel by Steve Parker

DEATHWATCH: SHADOWBREAKER
A Talon Squad novel by Steve Parker

DEATHWATCH: THE OMNIBUS
An omnibus by Steve Parker and many more

KNIGHTS OF MACRAGGE
An Ultramarines novel by Nick Kyme

INDOMITUS
An Ultramarines novel by Gav Thorpe

• DARK IMPERIUM •
by Guy Haley
Book 1 – DARK IMPERIUM
Book 2 – PLAGUE WAR

SPEAR OF THE EMPEROR
An Emperor’s Spears novel by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

BLOOD OF IAX
An Ultramarines novel by Robbie MacNiven

• MEPHISTON •
by Darius Hinks
Book 1 – BLOOD OF SANGUINIUS
Book 2 – THE REVENANT CRUSADE
Book 3 – CITY OF LIGHT

THE DEVASTATION OF BAAL
A Blood Angels novel by Guy Haley

ASHES OF PROSPERO
A Space Wolves novel by Gav Thorpe

WAR OF SECRETS
A Dark Angels novel by Phil Kelly

OF HONOUR AND IRON
An Ultramarines novel by Ian St. Martin

APOCALYPSE
A Primaris Marines novel by Josh Reynolds

FIST OF THE IMPERIUM
An Imperial Fists novel by Andy Clark

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

MESSIAH COMPLEX

THE SHADOW OF THE SAINTS

THE CRUELTYMAKER’S KINGDOM

THE NIHILUS EDGE

SORROWCROWN

AWAKENED

BROTHER TO DISHONOUR

THE LAST WORD

ENTOMBED

About the Authors

An Extract from ‘Deathwatch: Shadowbreaker’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind. By the might of His inexhaustible armies a million worlds stand against the dark.

Yet, He is a rotting carcass, the Carrion Lord of the Imperium held in life by marvels from the Dark Age of Technology and the thousand souls sacrificed each day so that His may continue to burn.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. It is to suffer an eternity of carnage and slaughter. It is to have cries of anguish and sorrow drowned by the thirsting laughter of dark gods.

This is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. Forget the power of technology and science. Forget the promise of progress and advancement. Forget any notion of common humanity or compassion.

There is no peace amongst the stars, for in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

MESSIAH COMPLEX

Steve Parker

Voss grabbed the big mutant by the shoulder and yanked him back hard. He hit the ground with a grunt. Rounds ripped the air where he’d been standing and stitched the walls of the habs across the avenue, biting chunks out of the brick and plaster. On the other side of the street, Striggo of the Carcharadons, black eyes bright with the sudden promise of bloodshed, knocked his bolter’s safety off and glanced over at Voss for a cue to engage.

‘Omni!’ he called out over the noise of the approaching orks.

Voss didn’t answer. He was busy barking at the mutant. ‘Keep your damned head down! You die before you lead us to the target, you get nothing.’

For a moment, the mutant – a large, tattooed thug by the name of Culcaven – blinked all six of the bug-like eyes that studded his flat, noseless face. He was stunned by the physical power of the Space Marine. He couldn’t remember the last time another person had knocked him over. He had always been proud of his strength, but in that moment he felt as powerless as an infant. Shaking it off, he shoved himself to his feet and scrambled into the cover of the hab wall behind Voss. He was breathing hard. Combat wasn’t new to him, but xenos were. He’d heard tales of orks, told to frighten even mutant children. He’d never imagined they would one day storm his people’s underground home. If Sapho the Witch had told Zenezeca, having seen the invasion in her visions, then Zenezeca – so-called saviour of the people of Jura, the City Under the City – had not deigned to share that foreknowledge.

‘This is just the first of them,’ Voss called over at Striggo. He tugged a grenade from his combat webbing. ‘Outriders.’

Striggo leaned briefly out of cover. Just a split second. The orks answered with a hail of fire that tore into the corner of the wall.

‘I count sixteen,’ he told Voss. Through that ugly, razor-lined mouth of his, with its triangular teeth and ragged, scarred lips, sixteen came out as part word, part hiss. No wonder Ghost had nicknamed him Lips. Not that the Carcharadon seemed to care.

‘They’ll be here in real numbers within minutes,’ said Voss, mostly to himself. To Culcaven, he added, ‘How far to Zenezeca’s compound?’

‘Still have to cross two districts.’

‘How many minutes at a run?’

‘For me? Forty if I go all out.’

Voss cursed. He’d be waist-deep in orks before he got within striking distance of the Mechanicus renegade. And Zenezeca’s forces, the mutant gangs for whom he’d risen to messiah status, wouldn’t just let two Space Marines get close. Intel said they were well armed and capable. The tech-priest had unified the mutant gangs down here and turned them into his personal army.

According to the briefing, he’d had over three hundred years to do it.

‘Prophet was right this time,’ Voss muttered. ‘Whole operation is another mess on a knife’s edge.’

Sigma should have sent them in with bikes or a speeder. Perhaps his psyker hadn’t foreseen the ork invasion any more than the locals had. An infested space hulk had broken from the warp and crashed into Cyrria’s only moon while the Saint Nevarre was still in transit. By the time the inquisitor’s ship had reached orbit above the capital, the planet below was a warzone.

Right now, Prophet was somewhere above ground, up in a Stormraven, designation Vampire, waiting for Voss to mark the target in case he and Striggo weren’t able to secure Zenezeca before the tech-priest made his run to the evacuation fields.

Voss pulled the pin on his grenade and leaned out from cover.

Let’s hope it works as well as it’s supposed to, he thought.

Mad-eyed greenskins were surging towards his position, their massive bodies clad in crude armour plate, stubbers barking, axes waving.

Voss tossed the grenade. There was a sharp crack. A reddish cloud filled the alley, wall to wall. There was a pause the length of one long breath, then the howls and screams started. Weapons clattered to the ground. Orks dropped to their knees. Green hands pressed hard on eyes being eaten away by a powerful bioacid adapted from tyranid samples.

The grenade type was nothing Voss had seen before, but working under the Ordo Xenos, he was getting used to that. Sigma had added it to the mission loadout without any explanation beyond what it was expected to do. According to the inquisitor, it attacked the sensitive tissues first – eyes, nasal membrane, gums – before it went to work on the lungs, eating them away quickly from the inside out.

The red mist dispersed, leaving a carpet of twitching green bodies. Voss allowed himself the briefest moment to appreciate the weapon’s effectiveness, then he grabbed Culcaven and shoved him out in front.

‘Move!’

Striggo took point, the mutant running between him and Voss. They’d have gone a lot faster without the mutant, but there were no maps of this place, and since this vast cavern had originally been carved out from exhausted rad mines, the background radiation made scans and even vox-comms an impossibility.

No maps. No contact with Vampire or Prophet.

We could have used seismic, thought Voss. Mapped it that way.

That was an oversight. Whose oversight, though, he didn’t take the time to consider. Around him as he ran, ugly, ramshackle tenements gave way to larger, better constructed hab-blocks interspersed with small processing facilities. Gas lamps and electric lumens still lit the empty streets. Light glowed in hab windows and spilled into the narrow alleys from doorways left open in the rush to flee.

According to the pre-drop briefing – which had been notably scant on details – Zenezeca had fled here after Al Rashaq vanished. Fled here or crashed here – that wasn’t known.

Al Rashaq, thought Voss, and he snarled as he thought of the mess they’d faced on Tychonis. According to Scholar on his mysterious return, in the seconds before he’d been marched off and isolated, Al Rashaq had been a Mechanicus black site – one they’d tried to hide from the greater Imperium. The Martian Priesthood had made it disappear when the Inquisition started getting close. That was three hundred years ago. It seemed like Sigma and the Ordo Xenos were closing in on it again. He and Striggo wouldn’t have been sent here otherwise.

Zenezeca, being a witness to the existence of the site, would have known he was being hunted by the Inquisition and the Adeptus Mechanicus both. No wonder he’d chosen to come down here where Imperial eyes never looked. According to Culcaven, for as long as any still living remembered, their mechanical messiah had been promising his mutant devotees a city of their own one day, a place in daylight where they could live without persecution. As his power base as the head of the underworld here on Cyrria had strengthened, along with his subsequent influence on the ruling class above ground, the mutants of Jura had gone from fearing him to adoring him. He was the healer, the fixer. He amputated vestigial limbs, grafted over secondary mouths and eyes, installed mechanical arms and legs, saved many from illness… He had even managed to make some of them passable enough that they could infiltrate the society above.

To the mutants – the secret, illegal offspring of those men and women who had been forced to work in the planet’s rad-mines since the Imperium had taken this world – Zenezeca was not just some renegade tech-priest. He was the only cure for pain and misery and despair they had ever known.

He was hope.

He was their messiah.

‘We need a vehicle,’ Voss told Culcaven as they ran. ‘If the orks reach Zenezeca’s sanctum before we do, he’ll run early.’

‘Look around you, m’lord Space Marine,’ gasped Culcaven between pounding footfalls. ‘Every single vehicle in Jura is being used to get our people to the rendezvous points for exodus.’

Culcaven had already told them as much as he knew. From the gathering points at the cavern-city’s easternmost edge, and from Zenezeca’s compound at the city’s centre, the mutants would surge aboveground and launch their assault on the Cyrrian Guard forces overseeing the evacuation fields. Zenezeca was planning on hijacking a warp-capable transport in order to get his people off-world and away. Just one would do it, but he’d have to slaughter a lot of troopers and Naval personnel to succeed.

On his own, Zenezeca could easily have bought his way off Cyrria. Strange that a tech-priest, usually so sentiment-free, would risk his own escape for these subhumans.

Striggo stopped at a junction up ahead, back to the wall, and dipped out to check for hostiles.

‘Clear. Which way, mutant?’

Culcaven barrelled past him, out into the middle of the junction, then turned right, calling over his shoulder, ‘This way! Through the market streets and into the manufacturing zone!’

There was a sharp screech of brakes. Culcaven dived, hitting the ground hard on his belly. A flatbed halftrack had come charging out of an alleyway on the left. The driver had swerved just in time to avoid Culcaven, missing him by inches.

The halftrack halted and sat idling noisily. Striggo looked over at Voss.

‘The Emperor provides.’

The Imperial Fist nodded. As one, they raised their bolters and stalked towards it.

Back then…

The boy, Maximmion, thumbed the switch and the welding gun’s flame vanished. The edges of the plate with which he’d just patched the pipe still glowed hot orange, but the glow was dimming.

‘Done here,’ he said to the boy on his right.

His brother, his twin, didn’t answer. Not at first. He was still intent on his own work. Then his repairs were finished too, and he turned to Maximmion and nodded.

His name was Kassus. Apart from the dark scar on his left cheek, the permanent mark of a tech-priest’s electro-whip, he and Maximmion looked identical. When he smiled over at his brother, Maximmion felt he was looking at himself smiling in a mirror.

‘We need to get out,’ Kassus said, tapping the timer on his wrist. ‘Two minutes.’

It would be enough. Repairs like this were their life now. At eight years old, their small bodies could fit down pipes and ducts that none of the adult slaves could fit into. Maximmion guessed that was why the tech-priests had paid his parents for the two boys, though he’d never know the meagre price they’d fetched. Both he and Kassus had shown above-average aptitude for technical work in the tests. They’d been put to work almost immediately. That had been two years ago. They had been just six years old.

‘Race you back to the hatch,’ said Maximmion.

Without waiting for an answer, he pushed his brother against the wall and ran past him at a half-crouch. The pipe was too narrow to run upright.

Kassus laughed and gave chase.

One minute thirty. Still plenty of time.

Morten, a listless adult slave who was often assigned to aid the boys, would be at the hatch, jaw slack as always, waiting to seal it up as soon as they were both out.

Kassus caught up to his twin, and they tussled a moment as they ran, but Maximmion was very slightly stronger, and he pulled ahead again.

One minute.

That the tech-priests had kept the twins together was something both felt must be a blessing of the Omnissiah Himself. There were other children here at the factorum, brothers and sisters, who had been split up on day one and sent off to work in entirely different sections of the complex.

Maximmion didn’t know that the decision had been made based on data gathered over long millennia about the marginally greater efficiency of identical twins set to work as teams.

Forty seconds.

Maximmion was still in the lead. He laughed as he ran, sure he’d maintain it.

The work was grim, and their life of slavery and punishment even more so, but there were always moments each day for play. He and Kassus made the best of the life their parents had sold them into.

Twenty seconds. The last bend.

Maximmion was running so fast he had to push himself off the far wall of the bend as he came around it. Just up ahead, barely five yards away, lumen-light marked the hatch.

He heard Kassus pound after him, rounding the bend just behind him. Maximmion put on a last burst of speed, but a sudden scream stopped him dead. He whirled, almost toppling over, and saw Kassus on the floor of the pipe holding his ankle.

Maximmion immediately started back towards him.

‘No!’ shouted Kassus. ‘Fifteen seconds! Just get out!’

Maximmion wasn’t hearing him. He reached Kassus, grabbed his left arm with both hands, and began pulling him backwards towards the hatch, shouting, ‘Morten! Morten! Shut off the steam! We need help!’

Even as he shouted himself hoarse, he knew it was too late, but he wouldn’t stop. He grunted and pulled harder.

Suddenly, Kassus lashed out with his good leg and kicked him away. Maximmion staggered and landed on his back, sprawling, looking up to see Morten’s face creased in anger, his big hands reaching down into the pipe.

‘No,’ shouted Maximmion, but he could do nothing. Morten hauled him out and tossed him onto the metal floor.

Maximmion hit his head hard. Blobs of white light flickered in his vision. He tried to get up, but his body wasn’t moving fast enough.

Dimly, he saw Morten throw the hatch cover into place just as the flow of superheated steam blasted down the pipe. He thought he heard a scream suddenly cut off.

It could have been his own. It could have been his brother’s. He’d never know.

Darkness swallowed him and he hit the floor again hard. He wasn’t conscious enough to feel it.

Voss shunts the memories aside…

A mutant with obscenely long arms and a distended, hairless skull jumped down from the passenger side of the halftrack and trotted around the front. He moved like an ape on his knuckles, less than human but fluid and strangely graceful. When he saw the person he’d almost hit, he shouted out.

‘Culcaven! We could’ve killed you, you wastehead. What the slag are you still doing here?’

The agitated mutant hadn’t noticed two large black shadows closing in, one on him, one on his comrades. But he certainly noticed when Voss pressed the muzzle of a bolter to his head. A visible shudder ran the length of his misshapen form. He slowly turned and raised his eyes to meet those of the Imperial Fist. His jaw dropped.

‘C-Cul?’ he stammered.

Culcaven was on his feet, walking towards Voss and the mutant he held at gunpoint. In the halftrack, a trio of other mutants in the back and the driver in the cabin remained statue-still. Those in the back looked down in terror at Striggo, their gaze shifting from his tattooed, chalk-white face to the bolter that was trained on them.

‘Don’t kill them,’ Culcaven called out to the Deathwatch operatives.

‘Cul?’ said the mutant at gunpoint. ‘What’s–?’

Voss’ bolter barked loud. No suppressors on this operation. Three gunshots immediately followed from behind him.

The long-armed mutant dropped, headless, like a bag of rocks. A pink mist hung in the air where his face had been.

Voss had already zeroed on the driver. Another single shot.

‘No!’ yelled Culcaven and threw his hands out in front of him. But it was too late.

Striggo leapt up into the flatbed of the halftrack, rocking its suspension, and effortlessly tossed the bodies of the three dead mutants to the ground. Voss stomped towards the vehicle and hauled the corpse of the driver out by an arm, dumping the body behind him before clambering up into the back with Striggo. The halftrack swayed with his weight.

‘You’re driving, mutant,’ said Striggo.

Voss nodded at a crate by Striggo’s feet – one of four in the back of the vehicle. ‘What’s in them?’

They were large and coloured gunmetal grey. Striggo ripped one open, casually bursting the locks apart.

‘Rad rifles,’ he told Voss, his face bathed in the eerie green glow from the weapons’ magazines. ‘And this one… full of rad grenades.’

Weapons like these would make a man sick and kill him in time, but not Space Marines. As for mutants, perhaps, thought Voss, they were already immune, having been born down here to rad-miner parents whose nature was already twisted.

‘We’ll keep the grenades,’ he told Striggo. Then he tossed a rad rifle at Culcaven’s feet. The mutant was still standing just by the halftrack’s cab, looking down in shock at the lifeless body of the driver. He stopped staring at it when he heard the clatter of the rifle on the ground beside him.

‘You should be armed,’ Voss told him. ‘We’ll have to fight.’

Culcaven shook his head and scowled, brows lowering over each of his six black eyes. ‘I won’t kill my own people.’

‘Orks, you twisted dolt,’ hissed Striggo. ‘You’ll kill them, won’t you?’

Culcaven picked up the rad rifle. For a flicker of an instant, Voss could read the thought that passed through him.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ the Space Marine growled. ‘You’d die where you stand. And for what? Your woman and child are waiting. You know the deal.’

Passage off-world for all three, plus sanctioned-mutation work passes that would prevent immediate execution on at least some Imperial worlds… provided Sigma got his hands on Zenezeca.

The passes wouldn’t mean much, but staying on Cyrria now the orks were here meant certain death. Even a long shot was still a shot.

‘Drive,’ Voss commanded.

Culcaven, his expression still bitter, slung his rifle and got into the driver’s seat.

‘Been around killers my whole life,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Never knew the true face of Death till now.’

Space Marines. Heroic. Glorious. Shining sword of all mankind.

Groxshit!

Just killers. Utterly cold, utterly inhumane killers.

Like machines.

Still sickened by the slaughter of four of his mutant brothers, Culcaven hit the pedal that jerked the halftrack into motion.

Soon they were cutting through the abandoned city at speed. The market district flashed past, its gloomy streets, once bustling and hung with banners and awnings, now lifeless hollows. Market streets gave way to refineries, smithies, mills, storage silos and assembly blocks.

Voss’ ears pricked. He looked over at Striggo. The Carcharadon nodded. He could hear it too. Over the rumbling of the halftrack’s engine and the rattling of its metal tracks, the Talon Squad teammates could hear orks. It was obvious from the noise that they were here in great numbers now, pouring into the cavern-city from the west. Voss could hear the throaty roars, the thunder of thousands of iron-shod feet.

‘Seems wrong, doesn’t it?’ muttered Striggo.

Voss cocked an eyebrow at him.

‘We’re Deathwatch. Xenos hunters…’

Voss threw him a half-grin. ‘And this mission has nothing to do with the xenos at all.’

Striggo nodded and stared off into space.

‘All this,’ he said, ‘because of Epsilon’s obsession.’ His lips drew back over his triangular teeth as he said that hated name.

Epsilon, thought Voss with a silent nod. Tychonis. That bloody mess.

Striggo’s squad had been betrayed by two of its members and the very inquisitor they’d been seconded to. Sabre Squad had been torn apart from the inside. The Carcharadon was the last of them.

And now he’s Talon Squad, thought Voss.

Striggo was still finding his feet, made harder in the absence of the team’s alpha. Ghost nicknaming him Lips could have turned ugly given the Carcharadon’s violent, sometimes animalistic nature, but the Raven Guard wasn’t as careless as he appeared. Giving Striggo a nickname had worked as it ultimately had on the rest of the squad, bringing him into the team, marking him as an accepted brother. Solarion was still, predictably, somewhat cold towards him, and Rauth was as unsmiling and distant as ever, but no one could deny Striggo’s ferocity and toughness, his competence in close-quarters assault.

Talon Squad had survived Operation Shadowbreaker, just as it had Operation Night Harvest, but both missions had ultimately come down to some kind of sacrifice on the part of Lyandro Karras. And now, after a mysterious absence that had something to do with the aeldari, the Death Spectres Librarian, designated Talon Alpha, was being held for deep interrogation and purity testing with the possibility of excommunicatus or even execution.

What was the price of saving us this time, Scholar? thought Voss. How did you do it? And when are you coming back to us?

His questions would have to wait. There were no answers down here.

There was no time to ponder them anyway. The fire from an explosion lit one of the cavern’s vast support pillars some five hundred yards ahead. Voss and Striggo looked up sharply. The deep chatter of gunfire sounded. Bestial throats roared out a great battle cry, no doubt marking a mass charge.

More fire and shouting answered.

Different fire. Different shouting.

In the back of the halftrack, the Deathwatch warriors hefted their bolters. Up ahead, beyond the grime-covered walls of the factora between here and the tech-priest’s sanctum, battle had erupted.

And it sounded intense.

Back then…

When he woke, with the echoes of that scream still in his head, Maximmion found himself looking up at two red-robed tech-acolytes. Morten was on one knee before them, explaining what had happened.

Maximmion shook off his grogginess and launched himself, red with rage, at the adult slave.

‘Bastard,’ he screamed.

One of the tech-acolytes turned smoothly and snatched him into the air with a metal hand. He held the boy before his eye-lenses a moment while Maximmion lashed out with hands and feet, trying desperately to connect, to damage the terrifying figure somehow.

‘Extreme emotional distress,’ bleated the machine-man through vocaliser grilles in his metal mask. ‘Increased adrenaline, cortisol. Elevated heart rate.’

A metal tendril snaked forward and jabbed a needle into Maximmion’s arm. It pumped blue fluid into him. Not much, but the effect was immediate. Maximmion’s eyes glazed over. His struggling stopped.

He was still conscious, still fully aware of everything – all his rage, all his grief – but the feelings seemed strangely distant, as if viewed on a monitor or projected by hololith. He knew they were his feelings, but somehow, he could no longer actually feel them.

The acolyte put him down.

Maximmion stood passively, staring into the folds of the acolyte’s red robe. Time felt different: slower, heavier, thicker.

‘The body must be removed,’ crackled the vocaliser of the other acolyte. ‘The pipe must be unobstructed for optimal flow.’

‘Masters,’ said Morten, ‘I cannot reach the body from the hatch.’

The acolyte who had spoken last turned his glowing green lenses on Maximmion.

‘The boy will pull the body close enough for you to remove it.’

Morten glanced at Maximmion and wet his lips anxiously.

‘Masters,’ he dared. ‘It is the body of his brother. Might I not just fetch a tool for the task?’

‘You waste time by asking,’ snapped the acolyte. ‘Drugged thus, the boy will do as he is commanded.’

So it was that Maximmion pulled his twin brother’s blistered, unrecognisable corpse from the pipe. The skin has been seared so that Kassus’ blackened hands were fused to his face. He’d been trying to cover it when the steam hit him. Even the tattoo at the base of his neck, the mark of his slavery, had been burned off.

V:054

In death, at least he would no longer serve the bastard machine-men.

Maximmion climbed back out of the pipe and turned. He watched as Morten lifted the body through the hatch, watched without any expression, without any words, for the blue drug rendered him a prisoner in his own skull, and his body did as the acolytes commanded. In his mind, he screamed and howled and railed at them for what they’d done, swearing that he would never forgive them, would never forget.

Morten placed the corpse gently into a sack, conscious that Maximmion was watching him. His usually passive face showed traces of sympathy and sorrow, but Maximmion didn’t care.

Morten had closed the hatch. Slave or not, he was part of this.

It didn’t occur to Maximmion then that had he not challenged his brother to a race…

It would occur to him later, however, and it would haunt him for the rest of his life.

‘A servitor will take the body to rendering,’ said one of the acolytes. ‘Nothing will be wasted. You may leave it in the corner there and return to your rostered duties.’

‘The boy will be sent for psycho-regulation and then returned to you for duty,’ said the other.

He hauled Maximmion easily into the air, and parting from his fellow, who had other tasks to attend, started off towards the medical bay, his metal feet clanging on the walkways and the stairs as he took them with stiff, rhythmic strides.

They passed through sections of the facility Maximmion had never seen. While he still couldn’t struggle, he noted every door, vent, duct and window.

He didn’t know what psycho-regulation meant, but he knew two things:

One, he would not remain their slave for long.

Two, he would punish them somehow.

Someday, he would punish them.

Not the time for those memories…

To the left, buildings blazed angrily, thick black smoke pouring from every window and doorway. Great brick chimneys toppled, smashing into the factories and warehouses below. And all around them, a surge of massive, rampaging greenskins churned like river rapids towards Zenezeca’s compound.

Culcaven had taken his foot off the gas, his body unwilling to take him any closer to the battle. Striggo rapped a gauntleted fist on the halftrack’s cab.

‘Don’t stop, mutant!’ he snapped. ‘Go faster. Go straight towards those gates.’

The southern gates of the compound were great doors of reinforced steel built into a high perimeter wall with towers every fifty yards. From those towers, bright green fire lanced out to burn through the flesh of the assaulting orks. Rad weapons could be devastating, but orks were the hardiest of foes. Arms and legs were seared off, and still they came, an unstoppable tide.

‘Culcaven,’ shouted Voss. ‘Are there gates on the east side?’ From their position, only the south gates were visible.

‘There are,’ the mutant shouted back over the noise of battle and the roar of the halftrack being pushed to its speed limit.

Several dozen orks had noticed their vehicle and had peeled off from the main horde to intercept it. Voss and Striggo lifted their bolters and began cutting them down with almost surgical precision.

From the cab, Culcaven saw horror after horror tumble to the ground without its head. The blood from the orks’ wounds was so thick and copious it looked black.

‘Head for the east gate,’ Voss shouted between kills.

A cluster of orks pushed ahead of the others, guns blazing, a genuine threat to the halftrack. Rounds whipped past Voss’ head. He loaded a high-explosive frag grenade into the underslung launcher on his bolter, levelled the barrel at the roaring mass, and fired.

The results were grizzly. The orks were blown apart. A heavy limb crashed onto the halftrack’s hood, splashing the passenger side window with blood. Culcaven cried out in surprise and swerved the halftrack away from the mass of bodies that now lay in its path.

‘The target will run soon,’ said Striggo.

‘That’s what I’m betting on,’ said Voss.

The orks were right up to the walls on the west side of the compound now, lobbing explosives over the top and clambering up ropes attached to crude grapnel hooks. The mutants in the gun towers had stopped firing already, slaughtered to a single man by the sheer volume of fire the orks had sent their way. But several hundred foolish souls were still fighting hard from the walkways, and mortars and rad grenades were being launched to good effect from within the sanctum walls.

Voss couldn’t see the buildings inside the compound due to the height of the walls, but there was a tall, black spire in the centre, ornate in design but bearing no Imperial iconography.

As he looked at it, a series of explosions ripped into it at about one-third of its height. Like a falling tree, it started to lean slowly at first, then gathered momentum. When it finally hit, it demolished the compound’s west wall with ease, then shattered into a billion bricks. Hundreds of greenskins were crushed. Dust rose in a great cloud, lit from inside by the continued fire of the orks the tower had missed.

There was not much return fire from the mutants now. They were broken, intent only on escape. Through the dust, the greenskins surged, high on a victory that now seemed unquestionable.

‘He’ll run,’ said Voss.

Striggo banged again on the cab.

‘Faster, mutant! Everything she’s got!’

The east gates came into view. They were already opening. The halftrack was at full speed. It could go no faster.

Two armoured cars with mounted gunners burst from the gates at speed, heading east. The halftrack was still three hundred yards away, able to pace them but not catch them.

Ork rounds peppered the side of the vehicle. One clipped Striggo’s left pauldron.

‘Damn,’ spat the Carcharadon. He sent a burst of bolter rounds back in reply. ‘You have to take the shot, Omni. We’ll lose line of sight.’

Voss was already loading the marker round into his bolter.

‘Which one?’ he barked at Culcaven.

‘What?’

Voss was snarling now. The convoy was about to move out of line of sight, blocked from view by the dense cluster of buildings on the right. The two armoured cars looked exactly the same.

‘The tech-priest,’ Voss yelled. ‘Does he ride front or back?’

‘What?’ said Culcaven. ‘I don’t know. I–’

The rearmost armoured car suddenly veered off and swerved straight towards the halftrack. The gunner on top opened fire, stitching the ground in front of them with rounds while he tried to draw a bead.

Culcaven swerved. Striggo immediately returned fire, killing the gunner with a burst of three rounds. Then he targeted the driver. Bolter rounds exploded on the front of the cab, but the vehicle kept coming straight for them, its front armour too thick to crack.

‘Damn it,’ cursed Voss.

‘Take the shot,’ barked Striggo.

Voss targeted the fleeing armoured car.

The oncoming car was still on a collision course. The driver was determined to stop them.

‘By the primarch’s blood,’ Voss muttered, ‘make this count.’

He fired. The marker round hit the target car just above its tracks.

Only a few feet remained now before a head-on collision. Culcaven screamed.

The halftrack was hit head on and bucked straight up into the air on its crumpled nose. Voss and Striggo were thrown hard, the world spinning around them. Before the halftrack had hit the ground again, both had landed, as surefooted as cats despite their size and weight. Then they were off, running at full sprint, bolters in hand, determined not to let the fleeing tech-priest get too far ahead.

Memory creeps over him again – an unwanted, unwelcome shadow…

The boy had intended to kill Morten in his sleep, but the older slave surprised him one day shortly after Kassus’ death while they were working repairs on a generator together.

‘You remember it all,’ said Morten.

Maximmion gulped, unsure of what to say, but something made him want to tell the man that the tech-priests’ psycho-regulation had achieved nothing.

‘I do,’ he muttered.

Morten nodded. ‘It cannot take away something you refuse to let go. It only works when you want to be free of the pain.’

‘If the pain makes me remember,’ said Maximmion, ‘I will never let it go.’

Morten looked at him sadly. ‘I will help you,’ he said as he pressed in close to Maximmion on the pretence of adjusting a tough bolt, ‘if you’re truly committed to it.’

Maximmion gaped at him. ‘To what?’

‘To running. To getting away from them.’

Maximmion was silent. Was this a trap? Was Morten just setting him up, knowing that Maximmion held him partly responsible?

Morten continued. ‘They don’t understand the power of emotion. They think their psycho-regulation is faultless. But it didn’t work on me when my brother and sister died on the factorum floor. And I’m damned sure it didn’t work on you. So I know you’re planning something, because I was, too.’

He paused and gave a sigh that seemed to shrink him and age him at the same time. ‘But I was too scared. I didn’t have the guts to go through with it.’ He looked Maximmion straight in the eye. ‘You do. You can make it out.’

Maximmion’s mind was reeling, still trying to put all this together. He was eight years old. For the last two of those years, all he’d known was the hissing pipes, thrumming machines and buzzing lumens of the facility.

‘I don’t know where to go,’ he muttered, half to himself.

The security picter on the wall behind was watching them, so they continued working as they talked, and Morten told him not to speak if he was facing the picter because the tech-priests had cogitators that could read the movements of the mouth. So they spoke only when working close to the generator, and only as loud as to be on the very edge of hearing each other.

‘You’re small enough to get out through one of the air ducts, if you can jam the fan for long enough. As soon as you hit the ground, you head west following the setting sun. You’ll have to cross the river, so go upstream to the broadest part. It’s shallow enough there that even a child can ford it. Keep pushing west, you’ll reach Londua and the space port.’

‘The space port?’

‘Steal some food and hide on a ship. The bigger the better. And don’t let anyone see your slave tattoos.’

Maximmion glanced at the binharic code etched on his inner forearm. He had another mark at the back of his neck – the skull-and-cog plus his four-digit designation.

V:055

‘There will be a bounty on you and alerts put out as soon as your absence is noted,’ said Morten, then, when he saw that the boy didn’t understand the word bounty, added, ‘a reward for returning you to the Mechanicus.’

Maximmion nodded his understanding.

‘Be careful who you trust out there. And don’t let anyone bring you back. The tech-priests always make a special example of failed escapees.’

The slave’s eyes took on a distant look after he said that. Maximmion guessed that he was thinking of someone who had been made into one such example. But he didn’t ask. The pain in Morten’s eyes was real, and it reassured him that the man wasn’t lying.

This was no trap.

‘We’ll do it in two days,’ said Morten, after shaking himself back to the present, ‘during the shift change.’

Their work on the generator was done. There was no more time to talk.

In two days, thought Maximmion. In two days, I’ll be free…

And I’ll have nothing to do with the damned tech-priests ever again.

Ignacio Solarion, also known as Talon Four or Prophet, sat in the back of the Stormraven with the portside hatch open, his back braced against the frame. He checked his chrono and cursed. How much longer would he have to wait? Would Omni and the new-blood ever make it out? The damned Imperial Fist was so over-muscled it was a wonder he could even run.

The Carcharadon seems fast, though.

Without vox-comms, Solarion had no way of knowing their status, and it was getting on his nerves.

He was unarmoured, dressed in a set of black-and-grey combat fatigues with a blue-and-white Ultramarines patch on his right shoulder and a Deathwatch skull-and-I sigil on his left. Over this, he wore webbing with several magazines for his sniper rifle.

His orders and his role in the operation had been made clear. He was to stay on board Vampire at all times and assist from the air. And he was not to make a kill-shot on the tech-priest. Maim him as needed, Sigma had ordered, but do not make the kill.

That meant the inquisitor needed this Zenezeca for interrogation.

Solarion shrugged. He had no problem with that. A good maiming could be just as challenging as a kill-shot. It was just the waiting, the not knowing, that was eating at him. Damned rad-mines. They should have used a hard-line to an antenna outside like they had back on Chiarro.

Vampire’s stealthed bulk sat silent and shielded from sight in a gully between shallow hills to the south of the evacuation fields. To the west, the sky was black with smoke from the burning capital. Now and then, there would be a long roar, and a Naval transport ship would haul itself into the cloudy sky, its belly full of petrified Cyrrians, taking them up towards the relative safety of space.

For the most part, they were still getting away clean, but ork aircraft had downed a few, darting in through gaps in the anti-air defences and gunships of the Cyrrian Guard to strafe the transports with rockets. The local fighter wings were being whittled down by sheer force of numbers.

Damn it, Tree Stump, thought Solarion, adopting Ghost’s favourite term of endearment for the stocky Imperial Fist. If you don’t emerge soon, the greenskins will hold the air and we won’t be going anywhere.

There was another long roar. Solarion looked north. Like a great, heavy bird struggling to fly, another shining transport nudged its way up through the clouds.

An ork fighter swerved in, breaking away from a dogfight with one of the Navy’s Lightnings to open fire on the transport’s main thrusters. Another Lightning plunged in from above just in time and, guns blazing, tore the greenskin machine to smoking, tumbling scrap.

Solarion nodded to himself in recognition of the pilot’s kill.

The voice of Vampire’s pilot, Zhannon, sounded in Solarion’s earbud.

‘That’s the marker, m’lord! Just appeared on the auspex.’ He was already cycling up Vampire’s turbines, engineered to be far quieter than those of any normal Stormraven.

Solarion grabbed his rifle and braced himself. Vampire lifted off the grass and swung its nose west.

‘Where?’

‘Close,’ said Zhannon. ‘Moving fast, so he’s mounted. It seems like the target just emerged from one of the old mine exits west-north-west of here. It’s open land from there to the evacuation fields.’

‘He’ll make a straight run,’ wagered Solarion. ‘The orks will have the evacuation fields soon. He doesn’t have much time. Neither do we.’

‘We’ll follow these hills,’ said Zhannon, already doing just that. ‘Come in low. Intersect their route.’

Solarion switched channels and tried to hail Omni and Lips.

‘Talon Three, this is Talon Four. Respond.’

Silence.

‘Talon Seven, this is Talon Four. Respond.’

And again.

‘Damn you both.’

Hurry it up, Omni, Solarion thought. You’d better not have stopped to fight the greenskins. If you dishonour me here with a mission fail, it will be you that I maim.

Memories persist…

It was a smugglers’ ship the boy rode out of Londua, but he couldn’t have known that when he chose it. It looked just like any other private hauler, and while they went about their business on the ground the crew looked normal too: thickset, hard-faced; grimy men used to heavy-lifting, low company and even lower hygiene.

Good enough, he’d thought, to carry him across the void and away from this damned place.

It was also the only ship prepping for imminent departure.

His heart felt like it would explode as he snuck behind a trio of arguing cargo loaders and scrambled up the rear ramp into the main hold. He was sure he’d be caught, but he’d spent so long running and crawling along vents and shafts that it was second nature to him, and it served him well now. He was already deep inside the ship’s air-circulation system when it began its push for orbit. He managed to stay hidden, going where he pleased under cover of the ducts and pipes, stealing food whenever he could – but never too much – until the ship was on solid ground once more almost a month later.

Early on, he’d thought about revealing himself and throwing himself on the mercy of the captain, but then, from behind a vent cover, he’d seen a fight break out over a card game. The youngest, smallest player was stabbed viciously several times by a much bigger man in a mad rage, and that was the end of such thoughts.

Maximmion never saw what the ship was carrying – the crates were well sealed – but he would learn of the xeno-narcotics and xenos tech inside them from the Arbites adjudicator who condemned the entire crew to death at the end of a very short trial.

Being under ten years of age, Maximmion himself, whom the crew had known nothing about but whom the Arbites cyber-dogs had easily located, was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment without hope of release in a place called Blackfort.

Back on the ship’s engineering deck during transit, while the rest of the crew slept or drank, Maximmion had used a welding pistol to sear his tattooed flesh, tears streaming down his cheeks, teeth gritted as he did it. Had he not, the Arbites would surely have returned him to his former masters, property of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Instead, the man who’d inspected him had been half distracted by other thoughts, and his examination of Maximmion was brief and cursory, which was just as well since Maximmion hadn’t done a very good job on the tattoo at the back of his neck. There had been no way to see if he was searing the flesh in the right place and the agony had been too great to burn a wider area.

So he was taken to Blackfort and presented to the chief warden, who conducted his own brief inspection. After commenting that Maximmion was ‘disappointingly small’, he then had him locked up with over two hundred other boys in a section called the juvenile wing.

That wasn’t the name the guards and other boys used for it, however. To them, it was the Wolf Pit.

And it was in the Wolf Pit where Maximmion, now nine years old, learned that he would have to kill to stay alive.

Enough. The past can rot!

From the east gates of Zenezeca’s compound, a flood of vehicles continued to pour out. As they sprinted towards the gates, armoured legs pounding, Voss and Striggo saw buggies, bikes, trucks and halftracks emerge. Mutant gangers were crammed inside. Others were hanging on to the sides of the vehicles by grab rails, one hand securing them, the other wielding a stubber, shotgun, rad-weapon or pistol.

The bikes and buggies were too fast. Voss pointed to a truck on the outside edge of the convoy. The side facing him and Striggo – the right side – had six mutants hanging on to it.

They hadn’t seen the Space Marines yet.

‘We can catch it,’ said Striggo.

A Space Marine running full speed in power armour is formidable. The truck hadn’t gained much speed yet, but no normal man could have caught it. The two Deathwatch operatives angled straight for it and started closing the distance rapidly.

‘No kills until we’re almost on them,’ barked Voss.

‘I know, damn it,’ said Striggo testily.

Within moments, they’d drawn up alongside it.

‘Now,’ said Voss.

There was a burst of bolter fire from each. Rounds exploded, centre mass, in the bodies of the six large mutants. Their corpses hit the ground, bouncing and rolling to a stop as the truck sped on.

Omni and Striggo had dropped speed in order to fire accurately. They put on another burst now and leapt, Voss grabbing on near the front of the truck, Striggo at the rear. Their sudden weight made the truck swerve.

The driver cursed. ‘What the–’

He looked out of his side window to see Voss’ brown eyes boring into him and a broad bolter muzzle aimed right at his misshapen head.

‘Keep driving, mutant,’ Voss growled into the cabin. ‘You do everything I tell you or we redecorate in red.’

At the back of the truck, Striggo ripped the rear doors off and swung himself inside. Immediately the mutants on board turned weapons on him, but they were hopelessly slow. The panicked spray of shots that hit him bounced harmlessly from his ceramite plate. He bared his shark-like teeth in a terrible death grin, slung his bolter over his left shoulder, and launched himself gleefully into murdering them all with his bare hands.

As he tossed their ravaged bodies from the back of the truck, the vehicle picked up a little more speed. The driver had heard the screams from behind him. He felt the truck suddenly get faster. He gulped and tried not to look at the scar-faced behemoth on his right.

Up ahead, the glow of daylight appeared at the top of a long, shallow incline.

There was a crackle in Voss’ ear.

‘Lips,’ he said, ‘I think we’ve got vox-comms back. Respond.’

He spoke the words low so that Striggo could only have heard him over the vox.

‘…hear… Omni.’

Not yet. Still some static.

‘Say again,’ said Voss as the truck, along with dozens of other racing vehicles, sped towards the mine exit and the daylight outside.

‘I said I can hear you, Omni,’ repeated Striggo, this time clearly. ‘Vox-comms confirmed.’

The truck sped out from the tunnel mouth into Cyrrian daylight muted by the black smoke drifting over from the devastation to the west.

Voss immediately voxed the Stormraven.

‘Vampire, this is Talon Three. Do you copy?’

Zhannon’s voice came through loud and clear. ‘Vampire acknowledges, Talon Three. Closing in on the marker.’

‘Armoured car. Dark grey. One mounted gunner.’

‘I have visual,’ replied Zhannon. ‘Moving to engage.’

Voss switched channel and spoke to Striggo.

‘Still in the game, Deathwatch.’

‘Still in the game.’

The memories are persistent. The past imposes again.

Kassus, had he lived to see it, would not have recognised Maximmion at eleven years old. Nor, had he not been mind-wiped and turned into a servitor as punishment for helping the boy escape, would the Mechanicus slave, Morten.

As he stood before the chief warden wearing only his ragged prison trews, Maximmion’s fight-scarred face was cold and expressionless, the jaw set and hard-edged, the eyes steely. It was nothing like a boy’s face at all, despite his age. It was the face of the prison’s junior pit champion, who had killed over sixty other hardened boys, most of those – but not all – on the sandy floor of the arena.

He was flanked by four guards, each holding a stun-baton. Three of those guards adored the boy. They’d each enjoyed significant winnings throughout his rise and reign. The other snarled at the boy behind his back and kept adjusting his grip on his weapon. Last fight, he’d bet the other way and lost a month’s salary. His woman was ragging on him daily for it. He no longer looked forward to going home after his shifts.

The chief warden cleared his throat and put a fat forearm on his desk. He looked Maximmion over, eyes lingering on the dense road map of scars which covered his neck and chest.

‘Tomorrow, you’ll fight in a different kind of match, boy. You’ve proven yourself against every single opponent pitted against you. You’ve beaten them all. But they were boys. Tomorrow, you’ll fight someone from the adult wing.’

Maximmion’s hard expression wavered for a moment, but only a moment.

‘An adult?’ he growled. ‘Why? You mean to have me killed?’

The warden snorted.

‘That will be up to you, boy. The man is a murderer. On the outside, he killed three boys around your age just for pleasure. He expects to toy with you a while then end your life. I think you might surprise him.’

‘And this has been arranged why? To satisfy a whim?’ Maximmion gestured with his head towards the embittered guard behind him. ‘Because someone wants me punished?’

The chief warden pushed himself up from the desk and turned to look out of the room’s only window. The sky was slate grey. It was beginning to rain. He spoke over his shoulder.

‘For the first time in a long time, this prison will have… visitors. They have asked to see our best juvenile fighter. That’s you.’

He turned and rounded his desk until he stood just a few feet in front of Maximmion. The look in his eyes was intense.

‘Win, boy, and it will change your miserable life more than you can possibly imagine. Even to fight before our guests is an honour you cannot begin to comprehend. I can’t say more. Just take my word for it.’

Maximmion frowned.

‘I don’t give a damn about honour, but it’s not like I have a choice. You put me in the pit, and I either win or die. That hasn’t changed. Will you give me information on my opponent?’

The chief warden shook his head.

‘You’ll have to assess him on the fly. Learn as you fight. Our guests wish to see how you’ll adapt.’

Maximmion turned his head to the side and cursed. He’d known the others he’d killed. He’d had their measure before the fights began. After all, he’d shared a prison wing with them. But the juveniles were never mixed with the adults.

‘This is a damned joke.’

The chief warden gripped him by his broad shoulders. Maximmion met his gaze again, found fire there.

‘It’s no joke,’ said the chief warden. ‘Everything you have endured in your life has led you to this moment. I have denied your existence to the Mechanicus for almost a year solely because I believed this day would come. A year ago, one of our maintenance people noticed the mark on your back and alerted the nearest factorum, thinking you had run from there. I lied to them. I can’t lie to them much longer. They will send one of their skitarii rangers soon.’

Maximmion’s jaw clenched. ‘I’ll die before I let them take me,’ he hissed.

‘Then win tomorrow. Win, and they can never lay claim to you ever again.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You don’t need to. Not yet. Just win.’

Maximmion was scowling, but he nodded. There was nothing more to be said.

As he left the room escorted by his four guards, the snarling one muttered, ‘I hope you get torn apart tomorrow, you little piss-rat. I’d pay to see that.’

Another guard laughed. ‘If you had any money left, Zekkis.’

The others laughed too. Maximmion ignored them.

He was already preparing his mind for war.

The driver of Zenezeca’s armoured car was a mutant called Grund. He was one of the so-called Five Princes, the gang leaders who, since unification, had functioned as the tech-priest’s generals. He was not the biggest of the mutants, but his senses were unusually acute and his reflexes were lightning fast, as he’d had to prove often in the past before much larger mutants had stopped challenging him.

He was a die-hard loyalist, a believer in Zenezeca and his vision of a safe place for mutantkind. He was proud to be Zenezeca’s driver… only today, it was another greater honour that he had been granted.

Sapho the Witch, another of the Five Princes – though she was technically female – had witnessed a brief but intense vision of a fire-breathing dragon in the sky, a black thing that would belch terror and death down on any below. At first, she believed it must represent an Imperial gunship and warned Zenezeca that their convoy would be attacked from the air. But there was one detail she didn’t understand – an icon that appeared at the end of the vision, if only for the briefest instant. When she told her messiah of this, he was confused.

‘It is the icon of the Ordo Xenos,’ he told her in flat, machine-like tones. ‘Xenos hunters of the Inquisition. They can have no business with me. They must be here for the orks.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Sapho had told him, ‘they are linked to the vision somehow.’

Zenezeca had processed that for a moment. He was Mechanicus, rogue or not, and he neither understood nor placed too much stock in witchcraft and visions. But he was no fool either. The frequency with which Sapho’s visions bore out certainly defied all calculated probability.

So it was that, this time, Zenezeca was not in the vehicle Grund was driving. He had chosen a much more anonymous carriage for this day.

As the Stormraven swooped in and launched its deadly Stormstrike missile, Grund knew death was upon him. He was a willing sacrifice. He would not live to see a free mutantkind, but his death would be part of realising it.

The missile struck.

The armoured car burst apart in a ball of flame. Black smoke billowed upwards in a tall pillar.

Vampire cut straight through it, leaving vortices in the smoke, and swung around behind the burning vehicle, waiting for Zenezeca to emerge from the flames.

He never did.

From buggies and trucks all around, solid rounds and beams of rad and las-fire now rose up to pepper the Stormraven’s underside and rear. The gunship shook and rattled with the onslaught, but those weapons couldn’t penetrate its hide. Still, if enough rounds hit the turbines…

‘He’s not there,’ spat Solarion. ‘Circle around and use the bolters to take out those other vehicles.’

It was inconceivable that the tech-priest might have died in the missile strike. Sigma, based on every piece of intel available, had authorised Stormstrike missile use. The local Arbites files on Zenezeca spoke of power armour and energy shielding. It was unlikely he would have been able to unite the warring mutant gangs and maintain his hold on the underworld without turning himself from a humble tech-priest into a living war machine.

No. If Zenezeca had been in the armoured car at all, he’d have exited its wreckage by now.

Vampire circled, bolters blazing, ripping buggies and bikes to scrap on the road below.

‘No sign of target!’ voxed Solarion. ‘Omni, are you hearing me? We hit the marked vehicle. He wasn’t in it. Where are you?’

Down below, the ground was crawling with mutant bikes, buggies and trucks, all making for the evacuation fields at breakneck speed, kicking up dust like a stampede of wild grox.

‘We’re in a truck on the outside edge of the convoy,’ Voss voxed back. ‘He must be in another of the trucks. Shred them. All of them.’

‘How will we know which truck you’re in?’

‘I’m not in one. I’m hanging on to the side.’ said Voss. ‘Lips, rip the roof off this thing so Vampire can see us.’

A moment later, Zhannon spoke. ‘Spotted them, m’lord.’

‘Good. Now ignore the bikes and buggies. Turn the bolters on every other truck you can see. Target the cabins. Let’s draw this bastard out.’

‘M’lord,’ said Zhannon, and the Stormraven banked hard, dropping lower to strafe the road.

Zenezeca was in the fifth truck. Vampire’s guns hit the cab so hard that the truck went into a roll. When it stopped, the trailer burst apart from the inside, torn open by thrashing black snakes of gleaming metal. These were mechadendrites, the tentacular limbs so beloved of the tech-priests.

‘Target spotted,’ Solarion voxed to Voss and Striggo.

Zenezeca leapt from the wreckage of the truck and turned to track the Stormraven.

‘I’ve never seen a cog-head like that!’ voxed Zhannon.

Zenezeca was no hunched, red-robed figure. He had augmented himself almost beyond recognition. For one thing, he was as big as any Space Marine and wore a kind of power armour that shimmered like gold. What had once been the iconic red robe of the Martian priesthood was now a cloak that hung from his back. From beneath it snaked six black mechadendrites, undulating like living things – four tipped with clawlike manipulators, two tipped with glowing green rad-blasters.

He was not hooded. His golden face, fashioned to look like a skull with a laurel crown, was bared to the sky as he looked up at Vampire. Red lenses glowed in the skull’s eye sockets.

There was no Mechanicus iconography anywhere on him.

‘Zhannon, fire on him!’

‘M’lord, we’re not supposed to–’

‘I’ll take full responsibility. Fire on him!’ commanded Solarion. ‘One short burst.’

I’ll take full responsibility? When did I start thinking like that?

The Ultramarine had changed more than he’d thought. Time with the rest of the Talon Squad hotheads had… What? Tainted him? He grinned a little. No. Roughed his edges, maybe. Not tainted.

Zhannon fired. Three rounds detonated on Zenezeca’s breastplate, or rather, they should have. Instead, a vague sphere of white light flickered around him, and the rounds burst harmlessly on it. He didn’t even stagger backwards.

Instead, the tech-priest’s rad-blasters flashed and recoiled in answering fire. Twin balls of green rad-fire leapt up towards Vampire.

Zhannon was incredibly fast despite his lack of augmetics. His reflexes and kill-count had brought him to the attention of the ordo, convincing them to pull him from the Imperial Navy. He evaded the rad-fire – few others could have – but only by inches. One of the shots passed so close he got temperature warnings on the portside turbine.

‘Omni, Lips, listen up,’ said Solarion over the vox. ‘The target is shielded as expected. The generator is on him, somewhere. You’ll have to get close.’

Then the Ultramarine addressed Zhannon. ‘Get us out of the effective range of his weapons. From there, we’ll help keep his mutants off Talon Three and Seven.’

Zenezeca’s weapons weren’t well suited to anti-air, but it was a good bet that the tech-priest would have installed advanced targeting systems in himself. He was a threat.

Stupid to stay in range.

‘As you command,’ said Zhannon.

Vampire banked left and swung away, strafing several vehicles as it went.

On the ground, still holding on to the side of the truck, Voss wasn’t concerned with the mutants that were still making for the evacuation fields. They were the Cyrrian Guard’s problem, not his. But many of the mutants had now noticed that Zenezeca was on the road. The vehicles started to slow down. Mutants leapt out and raced towards him to offer protection and aid.

‘You see him, Omni?’ voxed Solarion.

‘I see him.’

‘Then hurry it up before he’s back on the move.’

‘We’ve got this, Prophet!’ Voss snapped back as Vampire tore through the sky above his head. ‘Just be on station to pick us up.’

The memory is sharp, like it happened just yesterday…

Maximmion slipped the blow by a hair’s breadth and hammered a left uppercut into Grammond’s ribs. The blow would have cracked the bones of any boy, but his opponent – half a foot taller and seventy pounds heavier – just grunted hard and staggered back out of range, arms up in defence.

‘Rotten little bastard,’ spat the murderer. ‘I’m gonna–’

Maximmion dashed in and kicked hard at the man’s knee. He connected. Grammond’s leg twisted outwards. Off balance, he tried to steady himself by flinging his arms out.

Maximmion rocked his jaw with a blistering left.

Grammond saw stars. He staggered, trying to shake himself out of it.

Maximmion didn’t give him time. He dashed in again and hoofed Grammond hard between the legs before socking him in the jaw once again. Grammond plunged to a knee, groaning.

Maximmion was a blur. Suddenly, he was on the man’s back, legs cinched around his waist, feet hooked between the man’s legs, one arm coiled around his neck, the other providing lethal leverage.

They rolled to the sand, Maximmion tightening his choke as they did. Grammond bucked and struggled, but he could not shake the boy off. He hadn’t landed a single blow. If he’d had any breath in him, he’d have screamed his frustration.

Instead, he died quietly, his death marked with no more noise than the sound of his feet scrabbling on the sand. Even that lasted only seconds.

Eyes on all sides of the arena bore witness to the end of his miserable life.

Maximmion did not release the body until he was sure Grammond was dead. Then he relaxed, kicked it off himself, and rolled to his feet.

Once again, as he had when he’d entered the pit, he felt the inexplicable pressure of strange eyes boring into him. Two shadowed figures, impossibly large, stood at the mouth of an unlit exit.

His gaze flicked from them to the chief warden seated above the ring. The chief warden nodded proudly, then rose to his feet and began clapping. Immediately, applause and shouting erupted all around the pit. Inmates and guards alike roared their respect in unison.

Maximmion ignored the adulation. None of this felt like his other wins. He turned back to face the shadowed figures just in time to see one of them emerge into the light.

His eyes went wide. His breath caught in his throat. He’d heard of them, of course, but–

The massive figure, clad in bright yellow power armour, face hidden by a ferocious-looking helm, lifted some kind of pistol, aimed straight at Maximmion and pulled the trigger.

The dart punched into Maximmion just below his sternum. He looked down at it, tried to pull it out with his hands, but they weren’t working. His body had stopped responding.

As he fell backwards, the world went dark.

But the present had a weight to it, a gravity that memory lacks.

Mutant bodies and burning wrecks lay everywhere. The air was thick with black smoke and glowing embers. There were no more vehicles emerging from the tunnels down into the mines.

This was it.

‘You’ve slaughtered so many,’ said the tech-priest, emotions unreadable in his grating vox-grille voice.

‘Do you care?’ said Voss.

The tech-priest surveyed the devastation around him once again.

‘All this, for what? I promised them a better place. I would have kept that promise. A single transport–’

‘And then what?’ hissed Striggo. ‘A world for mutants? In the Imperium? How did you expect to manage that?’

‘By intellect,’ said Zenezeca with a shrug of his armoured shoulders, ‘and by force.’

It was an oddly human gesture for a tech-priest, but then he had been around no others for over three hundred years. Not since Al Rashaq.

‘You would have failed,’ said Striggo.

‘Perhaps. But there was a certain margin for success. A margin that did not exist with the orks.’

‘And now there’s just you and us,’ said Voss.

‘Let me guess,’ said Zenezeca spreading both his hands and his mechadendrites. ‘There is a hard way, and an easy way.’

‘I vote hard way,’ said Striggo, flashing a razor-lined grin.

Zenezeca’s eye-lenses bored into him.

The Carcharadon had slung his bolter and was wielding his favourite weapons in all the galaxy – two short power swords he called Wrath and Rage. They had been with him since his promotion to the Carcharadons Fourth Company. He longed to feel them slice through the mad tech-priest’s armour.

Zenezeca turned his lenses back to Voss.

‘You appear to be the saner of the two. It is you I shall address.’

Voss’ mouth twisted into a snarl. This was a gift – a tech-priest who was not protected by his oaths. All he had to bring back to Sigma was the head and body, intact, undamaged. The limbs… those he could rip off. There would be great satisfaction in that.

‘Sane?’ he rumbled. ‘Don’t bet on it.’

‘Ah,’ said Zenezeca, ‘I see it in your eyes. A great hatred. And yet, we have had no dealings in the past. Or is my data erroneous?’

‘You’re coming back with us,’ said Voss. ‘Someone wants to meet you. Most of you will do. We don’t need everything.’

Zenezeca actually chuckled. Voss had never heard that from a tech-priest. It sounded wrong.

‘A Space Marine with wit,’ Zenezeca grated. ‘The question is, why would the Deathwatch seek me out? I have no connection to xenos. Ah! Perhaps it is the Ordo Xenos of the Inquisition, but again… unless your master seeks to trade me to the Ordo Hereticus or the Adeptus Mech–’

‘Vorn Hagan alone is my master,’ snapped Voss, cutting him off. ‘In his name, and that of the primarch, I serve the ordo. And I do not care why the inquisitor wants you.’

He stepped closer to the tech-priest and lowered his bolter.

‘Omni!’ said Striggo, stepping forward, fists tightening on his swords.

Voss ignored him. He glared right into the tech-priest’s eye-lenses and said, ‘The orks are coming. I’m sure you can hear them as well as I. The last transports are leaving. Anyone left here on Cyrria is a dead man. This is a greenskin world now.’

Zenezeca scrutinised him for a silent moment.

‘I concur,’ he said.

‘Disengage your weapons,’ Voss demanded, ‘drop your shield, disconnect your mechadendrites and come with us. It’s not just the best offer you’ll get. It’s the only offer.’

Striggo snarled, still eager for a fight despite the solidity of Voss’ logic.

They stood there, tense, three figures armoured for a fight, and the moment balanced on a razor blade.

Then the glow from Zenezeca’s rad-blasters blinked out. There was a whine as he powered down his shield. Like a tangle of dead snakes, his mechadendrites dropped from the sockets on his back and hit the ground. He stepped forward, leaving them lifeless behind him.

‘Lead the way, Deathwatch,’ he told Voss. ‘We have an urgent flight to catch.’

Voss shook his head and indicated south with his bolter.

‘You first,’ he told the tech-priest.

Zenezeca started walking.

Voss opened a channel to Solarion and Lieutenant Zhannon. ‘Vampire, this is Talon Three. We’re bringing him in. Pick us up.’

‘We’ve got you, Talon Three.’

The Stormraven swung into sight over a low rise to the south, angled in towards them, and settled onto a stretch of road less littered with wreckage and the dead.

‘On our way,’ said Zenezeca, addressing Voss as he climbed into the gunship, glared at fiercely from the interior by a pistol-wielding Solarion, ‘perhaps you will tell me why you despise the Mechanicus so much.’

‘Don’t push your luck,’ growled Voss as he followed Zenezeca inside and locked him into restraints.

The Stormraven nosed upwards, the low growl of its turbines building to a deafening scream, and made for orbit where the Saint Nevarre was waiting.

‘I saw the way you looked at my mechadendrites, son of Dorn,’ said Zenezeca. ‘I saw the hate, the satisfaction when they lay unmoving. You detest the tech-priests, do you not?’

Voss strapped himself in beside Solarion and Striggo, all three facing the golden skull-like face in front of them, all three cradling bolt pistols they were itching to use.

‘I wish to understand what made you detest them so.’

‘This is going to be a long flight,’ sighed Striggo. ‘Where’s the off switch on this nattering piece of scrap?’

Voss laughed. He couldn’t help himself.

Over the vox, he heard Zhannon.

‘Saint Nevarre, this is Vampire requesting permission to dock.’

‘Permission granted, Vampire. Welcome back.’

Sigma’s hololithic image sat lambent and flickering across from the golden bulk of the rogue tech-priest. A bare granite table sat between them. The room was small, sparsely furnished and cold, but such things mattered to neither. The inquisitor was not really there, and Zenezeca experienced discomfort only as a dataset.

It was Al Rashaq which sat foremost in both their minds.

‘It was never supposed to be found,’ said Zenezeca. ‘It is far too dangerous.’

‘Something like that cannot be hidden for long,’ said Sigma, ‘even by the might of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Not from the eyes and ears of the Emperor’s Holy Inquisition. And not from the aeldari, since they now know as much as we did prior to securing you. As dangerous as it may be, it will be a lot more so in the hands of the xenos.’

Zenezeca processed that for a silent moment, calculating probabilities. Most of his projections were dire in the extreme.

Most, but not all.

‘For that reason, then,’ he told the glowing image of his captor, ‘and for the preservation of all the accumulated knowledge and skill that is my life, I will go with you. I will return to the anomaly from which I fled.’

THE SHADOW OF THE SAINTS

Ben Counter

It came at them out of the light.

Men would have been dazzled by the automaton of globes and stars that crowned the Hall of the Eugenos. Their eyes would have struggled to make out shape and movement in the glare. But Space Marines were not men, and they saw it as it dropped from the ceiling. They saw the six splayed limbs, four tipped with claws and two with scything blades, and the sharp probing organ that extended from between its fangs.

Apothecary Dacius’ bolter was in his hand automatically, his battle-reflexes reacting to the shimmer of movement.

‘Eyes up!’ yelled Brother-Sergeant Orias as the rest of the kill-team drew their bolters and took aim at the thing descending from above them.

It landed among the torn corpses of the men and women its kind had slaughtered just moments before. The gold-inlaid mosaics were slick with their blood. Bodies were draped over the lecterns and high-backed councillors chairs of this place of government. Some had been ripped apart entirely. Others were sliced and impaled as if by huge curved blades. Thirty or more were scattered around, dead where they had fallen, surrounding the official papers and voting scrolls now dark from soaked-up blood.

The creature hissed, crouched and leapt at Brother Vaevic.

The hall echoed with bolter fire. Vaevic fired three shots, two bursting against the ribbed exoskeleton of the creature’s torso. Its charge was arrested and it skidded wetly on the floor.

Brother Kasdrubal raised his tulwar, the power field crackling down the weapon’s length, and sprinted through the carnage towards the creature. It howled and rounded on him, throwing out its forelimbs in a guard. Kasdrubal swung his power weapon and it shattered one of the creature’s bony scythe-like blades before it slashed at him with the other, slicing into the side of his breastplate and sending him rolling away.

‘Back! Back! Keep your distance!’ Orias snapped off shots from his bolt pistol, the quartered red and yellow of his Howling Griffons colours flashing on his shoulder guard.

The creature sprinted faster than even a Space Marine of the Deathwatch could react to. It scurried behind one of the decorated pillars of the hall, trailing spatters of purplish gore.

It dived at them again, using the unexpected angle to buy it the seconds it needed to close. Vaevic was still swinging his bolter around when it slammed into him and clattered him to the floor. He forced his arm up into the creature’s face, holding off its lashing claws and the bone-tipped tongue that stabbed down at him. The creature’s second pair of forelimbs raked at him, its nails gouging into the ceramite of his armour. Vaevic drove an elbow into its face. Bone splintered and purplish blood spurted, but another clawed hand closed around Vaevic’s throat to constrict and crush.

Three shots slammed into the creature. One caught it in the throat, one in the chest, the last in the face. Its head snapped back, hissing brain matter cascading over Brother Vaevic as its cranium dissolved away.

Vaevic kicked the corpse off him. The creature’s six limbs shuddered in its death throes.

Apothecary Dacius lowered his bolter. The kill-shots had been his.

‘Kasdrubal!’ shouted Orias. ‘Report!’

‘I am not hurt,’ said the White Scar, looking down at the bleeding rent in his chest armour. ‘Except the wound to my pride. The xenos touched me. I must do penance.’

‘Have Dacius look at it anyway,’ said Orias. He knelt beside the dead creature, which had stopped moving. ‘Genestealer,’ he said. ‘Biomorphed.’ He lifted the probe-like organ lolling from the creature’s mouth. ‘Implant attack. A moment later, Brother Vaevic, and you would be with child.’

Vaevic spat on the floor at the foulness of this idea. ‘Adeptus Astartes cannot be implanted. You know that, brother-sergeant.’

‘I doubt that fact would have cooled its ardour,’ replied Orias.

Vaevic scowled and wiped the worst of the xenos creature’s brain matter off his face with the back of his gauntlet. The Hawk Lords were not known for their sense of humour.

‘Three Hellfire shells to fell one xenos,’ said Brother Gothardus, regarding Dacius from below the hood of the monastic habit he wore over his armour. ‘A waste, brother.’

‘I did not think a Dark Angel would turn his nose up at the notion of a dead xenos,’ replied Kasdrubal.

‘I rejoice in its death,’ replied Gothardus, with nothing like rejoicing in his voice. ‘Not in seeing it inefficiently done.’

‘Quiet your tongues, brothers,’ said Brother-Sergeant Orias. ‘Gothardus, watch the western entrance. I would not have another one of these things get behind us. Vaevic, to the north. Brother-Apothecary, get a sample of this. Vorts wanted as many as possible.’

The narthecium mounted on the left forearm of Dacius’ gauntlet contained several tools for surgery and tissue extraction. A scoop-like instrument slid from the casing and he used it to take a sample of the genestealer’s exposed brain. He placed it in a small transparent vial, one of several dozen in the compartments built into the waist of his armour.

‘They hit this place recently,’ said Orias, looking at the bodies strewn around the Hall of the Eugenos.

‘Less than an hour ago,’ replied Dacius. ‘The blood has yet to settle.’

‘And the xenos left one behind to ambush us.’

‘You credit them with that much intelligence?’ asked Vaevic from the northern archway.

‘I credit them with enough cunning to keep evading us,’ replied the sergeant.

‘They’re animals,’ said Kasdrubal, who was picking his way through the bodies, scanning as ever for threats. Dacius had heard tell of Chogoris, the White Scars home world, where the dangers of the nomads’ everyday existence made them constantly alert even before selection for the Chapter. ‘I have no more respect for them than the vermin beneath my boot.’

‘I cannot respect the xenos,’ said Orias. ‘But I will not see my brethren put at risk because I underestimated their cunning.’

Dacius put the sample container back into its compartment. The genestealer appalled him. The malleability of the tyranid organisms’ structure, biomorphing to fit particular requirements, was a strange form of heresy in its own right. Dacius had studied for years in the fortress-monastery of the Patriarchs of Ulixis to learn the arts of the Apothecary and had every aspect of human anatomy filed away in his sleep-taught memories. No one, however, would possess such knowledge about the tyranids. No two organisms were the same. They adapted and mutated. They evolved. They changed.

The human bodies littering the Hall of the Eugenos were in the various uniforms of Caediss’ ruling aristocracy, the bright colours all made dull and rust-tinged by the blood. The tyranids had torn through them so fast one of them still held the ceremonial sceptre of this planet’s aristocratic parliament. They had been caught while holding a governmental meeting, quite probably to discuss what was to be done about the xenos hunters butchering their way through the aristocrats of Spire Supremus.

‘The bodies are intact,’ said Dacius, mentally counting the severed limbs and sundered torsos.

‘You must use some definition of “intact” I am not familiar with, brother,’ said Kasdrubal.

‘There are no parts missing,’ said Dacius. ‘The xenos are not hunting to feed.’

‘Then they are not here by chance,’ said Sergeant Orias. ‘Caediss’ leaders are their target. But then that is hardly a surprise.’

Dacius followed a streak of gore across the mosaics of the hall, towards a set of windows opening onto a balcony. ‘There’s a blood trail here,’ said Dacius.

‘Always curious, this one,’ said Kasdrubal. ‘Brother-Apothecary, there is no reason for us to remain here. The xenos gain ground on us.’

‘Be quick,’ said Orias.

Dacius followed the trail to the window and pushed it open. The close, smoky air of Caediss crowded in.

Below him, the vistas of Hive Tantali rolled out in dark banks of manufactoria and tenement stacks. Thousands of antennae and funnels broke the surface like bristling hairs on the hide of an immense creature. The Imperial census, twelve years out of date, had last estimated the hive’s population at eighty million. Ten times that inhabited the planet Caediss in total. The spires of the hive rose up towards the gunmetal-coloured sky. They were the haunts of the hive’s lesser houses, none of them as tall or exalted as Spire Supremus. That made it doubly clear the tyranids were not here by accident. They had come to the place where their murder spree would do the most damage to Caediss, into the midst of those who would be leading the defence of the planet.

Past the clouds of industrial pollution, at the outer edge of Caediss’ solar system, the tyranid hive fleet had broken through to realspace. They were headed for this planet to invade, render its population into biomass and weave billions more tyranid organisms to continue their interstellar predation. The invasion would be fought on the plains outside the hive cities, by the planetary defence forces whose commanders now lay dead in Spire Supremus, ripped apart by the fleet’s vanguard organisms.

The blood trail ran around a balcony. Dacius followed it and saw a body slumped against the curving spire wall. It wore a uniform of deep red and gold. Dacius recognised the regalia of the Tantali Grand and Regal, one of the planetary defence force regiments currently mustering outside the hive. The corpse was a man with a deep wound running from his shoulder to his abdomen. He had an ornate laspistol clutched in his hand. He had tried to fight, and then he had tried to flee.

The corpse drew a breath. The laspistol pointed right at Dacius, wavering in the weak grip. The man’s eyes opened wide and he choked down a blood-flecked breath.

‘A… a Space Marine,’ spluttered the man, looking in awe at the armoured figure looming over him. ‘Then I am dead. This is the final battle. This is where I will stand beside the Emperor and His legions…’

‘No,’ said Dacius. ‘You are alive.’

He crouched beside the fallen aristocrat and sprayed a lattice of syn-skin filaments over the wound from his narthecium, stopping the bleeding. It might not save him, but it would give him time. ‘House Kelevarn, am I correct?’

‘Gonwyn Kelevarn, Commodore Signifer of the Grand and Regal,’ came the reply, through gritted teeth.

‘We are here to kill the xenos that are attacking your people,’ said Dacius as he worked. ‘Tell me of them.’

‘We were… we were going to order the evacuation,’ gasped Kelevarn. ‘Lord Grelwuyr thought we should open the armouries, there was a debate… If we had just agreed, we would be gone…’

Kelevarn’s wound was mortal. He would die. ‘The xenos,’ said Dacius.

‘Throne of Terra, there were so many of them.’ Kelevarn tried to sit up, but Dacius held him down before he tore his organs more. ‘They were fast. Like nightmares. Like the things the priests warn you about in the sermons. And the one that led them…’

Kelevarn coughed out a rope of bloody spittle. Dacius grabbed his shoulder. ‘Their leader? Son of House Kelevarn, what of the leader?’

‘I… did not see it,’ said Kelevarn weakly. ‘I just saw the blood on it. They tell a story in the lower hives. A thing that takes you away if you have sinned. The shadow of the saints, come to punish you. It cannot be seen. A ghost with substance. The night comes alive and takes you. That was what came for us.’

Dacius stood up. The wound was too severe to be treated without a full medicae suite, and a single wounded man could not be a priority compared to preventing another slaughter. Triage was all he could do.

‘You waste our time,’ came Brother Gothardus’ voice from the window. Dacius turned to see the Dark Angel regarding him with scorn. ‘This one is dead. He needs no attention. Your brethren do.’

‘He saw the xenos,’ replied Dacius. ‘There’s a vanguard organism leading them. Not a genestealer.’

‘Then it is getting further ahead of us the longer we tarry.’

‘And where should we go?’ retorted Dacius. ‘We do not know where the xenos are going. There are three hundred thousand people in this spire. Which of them are they going to attack next? Care to confide in me, brother, or is that one more secret you Dark Angels love to keep?’

‘Were we not in the field,’ said Gothardus darkly, ‘I would be sharpening my duellist’s blade.’

‘The Apothecary speaks the truth,’ said Sergeant Orias from the window. ‘Though I would not hear such discouraging words from my brethren. We have been following the trail of the dead, but we do not know where it leads. If we knew where the enemy would strike next, we could head them off.’

‘Then what is your suggestion, brother-sergeant?’ said Gothardus. It was impossible to tell if there was anything sardonic in his voice.

‘They must be based somewhere,’ replied Orias. ‘Everywhere they have struck, they have vanished again. Brother Kasdrubal has only ever been able to follow their spoor a few hundred yards at a time. The xenos must have a lair with paths they know well, to let them strike and melt away again before we can entrap them.’

‘Then we switch from picking over the corpses to finding their lair?’ said Dacius.

‘Would that it were so simple,’ said Orias, ‘but yes. We need the schematics for the spire. Start narrowing down the possibilities. Scour them each, perhaps split up…’

‘Ophidias,’ croaked Gonwyn Kelevarn from the floor of the balcony. Blood was foaming around the corner of his mouth.

‘Say again?’ said Dacius.

‘House Ophidias. Their estate lies empty, past the Weeping Gardens.’

‘I know nothing of a House Ophidias,’ said Orias. ‘There was no mention of them in the planetary history.’

‘We struck them from history,’ replied Kelevarn. Every word was accompanied by a bubbling of blood. ‘The arbitrators… the Administratum… they never knew.’

‘What did they do?’ asked Dacius.

‘Deviants…’ Kelevarn coughed and winced, the sound accompanied by the crunching of ribs. ‘We purged them. All of them. That estate has been empty for years.’

‘They’re in the spire?’ Dacius crouched down beside Kelevarn, struggling to hear his weakening voice.

Kelevarn nodded. ‘My father was there. The other houses sent their best sons to do it. They stormed the estate, left nothing alive. He swore me to secrecy but… hardly seems to matter now…’ He smiled, and blood ran down his chin.

‘The Weeping Gardens aren’t far,’ said Orias.

‘What will we find there?’ asked Dacius of Kelevarn.

Kelevarn didn’t reply. Dacius slid the somatic probe of his narthecium under the skin of the man’s wrist. A faint life sign jumped erratically, then tailed off as the heart stopped beating.

‘Dead,’ said Gothardus. ‘How easily they break.’

‘Brothers,’ said Orias into the kill-team’s vox-net. ‘Draw in and abandon this position. Meet at the next western junction.’ Acknowledgement signals from Kasdrubal and Vaevic chirped over the vox. Orias and Gothardus headed back into the Hall of the Eugenos.

Dacius didn’t know the funeral rites of Caediss’ aristocracy. Perhaps a son of House Kelevarn was supposed to be burned, or buried, or left on a spire top for the planet’s scavenger birds to devour. He had no idea. And even if he had, there was no time to observe them.

He closed the dead man’s eyes, and went to join his battle-brothers.

The Weeping Gardens were dedicated to those who had died in the defence of Caediss, or of Hive Tantali in the planet’s occasional inter-hive conflicts. It was a war memorial in the form of a stretch of artificial woodland, carefully manicured with sprays of trees or bright flower beds. An ornamental river thick with sparkling fish ran through it, crossed by picturesque bridges. Statues and memorial stones were everywhere, from the austere inscribed pillars of past ages to the more recent ornate sculpture portraits of fallen nobles in full uniform, astride horses or brandishing ancestral swords as if ordering the charge.

It was beautiful in an artificial, aggrandising way. It certainly broke the oppression of the glowering ornamentation of Spire Supremus, and the industrial tangle of the surrounding hive. It was a place of life, and an echo of nature in a hive city where nature had otherwise had no place to thrive for several thousand years.

The kill-team picked their way across the Weeping Gardens, automatically covering one another between the cover of tree trunks and stone memorials. Sergeant Orias kept an eye on his auspex scanner as the battle-brothers of his Deathwatch team moved around him.

‘Picked up anything, Brother Kasdrubal?’ asked Orias over the vox.

‘Just the faintest stink of them,’ replied the White Scar. ‘They passed by this way, more than once. Not enough for a trail to follow, though. These ones mask their presence. They learn.’

Kasdrubal’s gene-seed had given him a particularly keen sense of smell, a relic of his primarch Jaghatai Khan’s abilities as a hunter that was occasionally ascendant in the White Scars. He could pick up the spoor of various xenos, including the more common tyranid bioforms, and track them over large distances. It had been of great use after his secondment to the Deathwatch, but the xenos haunting Spire Supremus had kept evading him.

Across the Weeping Garden, rising to the distant ceiling of the spire layer, was the frontage of the House Ophidias. Its spiral pillars ran to the ceiling, flanked by glowering statues of house nobles in uniforms and brocade. Stained-glass windows between the pillars were dark. Several monumental gates gave access from the Weeping Gardens, all of them closed and barred.

‘Plenty of ways in,’ said Sergeant Orias. ‘Air vents. Servants’ entrances. Not to mention above and below.’

‘Lots of sight lines, too,’ said Vaevic. ‘Decent sniper has a hundred places to hide.’

‘Not many tyranid snipers,’ said Kasdrubal.

‘Unless they have evolved one,’ replied Vaevic.

‘I am not going blundering in there,’ said Orias. ‘If the House Ophidias is their lair, the xenos have to pass back through here to reach it. That is when we attack.’

‘I came here to hunt,’ growled Kasdrubal. ‘Not skulk in the bushes.’

‘Your appraisal differs, brother?’ said Orias dangerously.

‘I did not say you were wrong,’ replied Kasdrubal. ‘I would just rather be killing tyranids right now.’

Chasing the xenos around Spire Supremus, moving from one scene of slaughter to the next, had been frustrating in the extreme. Over the several days since the kill-team had reached Spire Supremus, even the Space Marines’ patience had been tested. The White Scars were headstrong and aggressive, but Kasdrubal wasn’t the only one feeling outwitted by the xenos hunters having their run of the spire. They had one dead genestealer to show for their efforts. The tyranids, meanwhile, had denuded Caediss of well over two hundred of its highest-born.

Apothecary Dacius took up position behind the bole of a tree, where he could keep watch on the House Ophidias down his bolter sights. The rest of the kill-team spread out, covering every direction. If the tyranids were using House Ophidias’ estate, they would be seen.

‘I like this not,’ said Gothardus over the vox as the artificial wind stirred the boughs of the garden’s trees.

‘Remain silent, brother, unless you spot the enemy,’ scolded Vaevic.

‘I speak of our purpose here,’ continued Gothardus. ‘Think on it. What will become of Caediss, even if we eliminate every vanguard organism in this spire?’

‘I would thank the Emperor for the spilling of so much enemy blood,’ said Kasdrubal.

‘And this planet?’ said Gothardus. ‘Do you truly believe Caediss can survive the invasion? No Astra Militarum regiments can respond quickly enough. There are no other Chapters in the region. Can the planetary defence forces really hold off an invasion, even if their leaders stop dying?’

‘I believe we have a mission to complete,’ said Vaevic, crouching by a statue of a uniformed officer cradling a wounded comrade in his arms.

‘Then we wait for the invasion to land,’ said Gothardus. ‘While the xenos chew on this planet there will be millions of them to kill. Reap our tally then, if what we want is to wet our blades with tyranid blood.’

‘There are almost a billion people on this world,’ said Vaevic.

‘Your point?’ replied Gothardus. ‘Apothecary Dacius, you have been silent. What are your thoughts? Is it a worthy purpose to save the leadership of a planet that cannot be saved?’

‘Enough,’ voxed Sergeant Orias. ‘We have our orders. We have our duty.’

The Weeping Gardens was stocked with fauna imported from off-world. A spindly four-legged herbivore with a dappled hide walked through a clearing ahead, then trotted off in alarm when it saw Dacius crouching in wait. A bird alighted in a tree nearby, preening its emerald-coloured feathers.

A ripple passed over the bird, like the warping effect of a heat shimmer. Dacius’ enhanced vision picked up on the hint of motion and followed the distortion through the foliage, between the trees. A branch sagged under an unseen weight.

‘It is here,’ voxed Dacius quietly, trying to pick out a solid target amid the distortion. ‘The Shadow of the Saints.’

‘Contact!’ yelled Brother Vaevic, followed by a burst of bolter fire.

Dacius whirled around to see the obscene form of a genestealer plunge through the foliage to the ground, kicking up a spray of dirt as it landed. Vaevic and Gothardus fired at it, and the crossfire blew off one of its clawed forelimbs.

The genestealers were on the ceiling, almost too high up to see, scrambling from the vents and maintenance hatches above the kill-team’s position. By the faint light of the Weeping Garden’s widely spaced glow-globes, Dacius could make out the snapping ovipositors between their slavering mouth-tentacles.

He counted off more than a dozen of them. They dropped from the ceiling to land among the trees and in the clearings between them, in a blur of chitin and claws.

In moments, the kill-team were surrounded. Dacius heard the hum of the power field around Kasdrubal’s tulwar as the White Scar drew his favourite weapon.

‘Hellfires!’ yelled Sergeant Orias.

Each member of the kill-team had a magazine of hellfire bolter shells, the same Gothardus had scorned Dacius for using too readily. They were extremely rare, even in the specialised armouries of the Deathwatch. Each shell’s miniaturised warhead was a reservoir of acidic venom that erupted into the target, melting through chitin and tissue. They were particularly effective against tyranids, whose redundant organs and resilient nervous systems meant they could keep fighting with wounds that would render another organism helpless. The tyranids were theorised to be from another galaxy entirely, locusts moving from their own fully consumed region of space to another, and their anatomies were so different from anything else the Imperium encountered that traditional weapon-lore did not apply to them. Against an enemy that ignored the pain and shock from a bolter shell’s impact, the hellfire shells were a great leveller.

Dacius snapped the magazine of hellfire rounds into the side port of his bolter and switched its selector to the xenos-killing ammo. One of the genestealers hit the ground in front of him and bunched its back legs beneath it, preparing to leap at him.

Dacius put three hellfire shells into its torso. They ripped through the chitin, spraying ichor out through its back, but still it jumped, propelled by an instinct that survived a moment after death, and bowled Dacius off his feet onto the grass. He rolled on top of it and jumped back to his feet.

‘The Shadow is here!’ he yelled. ‘The Shadow of the Saints! In the trees!’

Vaevic whirled around as he heard the movement behind him, but the Shadow of the Saints moved with such speed he had no time to take aim. The trees around the Hawk Lords Space Marine shimmered, and a blade of distorted space detached itself from the foliage, slicing into Vaevic above the shoulder, driving deep through his armour and into his chest cavity.

Vaevic’s blood, the vivid red of a Space Marine’s hyper-oxygenated physiology, sprayed across a huge, shifting shape behind him. Dacius couldn’t make out any of the details, just an impression of great size and speed and a multitude of insectoid limbs.

The Shadow of the Saints hauled Vaevic up into the air. He tried to bring his bolter around, but the shoulder joint of his firing arm was ruined. His black-painted Deathwatch armour was slick with blood and the silver trim turned crimson.

‘My body will blunt your blades!’ gasped Vaevic with a spray of blood. ‘May my bones choke you!’

Vaevic’s chest erupted in a sudden half-dozen wounds, ripping out through his breastplate, his head snapping back with the force of it. Whatever had punched through his back tore out again, taking the back of his torso off with it, armour, backpack and all. Vaevic’s body flopped, nerveless, and the bolter dropped from his hand.

The Shadow of the Saints flung Vaevic’s corpse off its blade. It had taken perhaps three seconds to dismember him.

The rest of the kill-team rattled off a crossfire of hellfire shells into the clearing where Vaevic’s body lay. The distortion of the Shadow’s body flitted up into the foliage, and even a Space Marine’s heightened sight could not pick out its outline among the leaves.

‘Draw in!’ yelled Orias. ‘Don’t get surrounded!’

Dacius broke cover, snapping off a pair of shots at a genestealer running at him through the trees. He spotted Kasdrubal slicing off a genestealer’s arm with his tulwar as Brother Gothardus shot another square in the face, blowing its cranium open and colouring the tree trunk behind it with purplish brains.

Two more genestealers leapt at Kasdrubal. Their animalistic intelligence marked him as the greatest threat. Kasdrubal shot at the closest and his three-shell volley blew off the creature’s leg. He met the other with a slice of his tulwar and the blade ripped halfway through its torso.

The genestealer kept coming, raking at Kasdrubal with its bladed forelimbs. Kasdrubal twisted his tulwar to force the weapon free. Claws sliced right through the ceramite of his chestplate and shoulder guard, splitting the white-painted guard in half and laying open bone and muscle.

The first creature lurched along the floor and grabbed Kasdrubal’s leg with the talons of its rear pair of upper limbs, twisting it out of shape as the ceramite buckled. The genestealers were appallingly strong, their blades and talons sharp enough to pierce through even Space Marine armour. It was as if a creature had evolved specifically to fight the Adeptus Astartes up close. Given the speed with which the tyranids could adapt, perhaps that was literally the case.

Dacius shot the genestealer on the ground, the hellfire shell blowing its torso open. He ran to Kasdrubal and grabbed him by the collar of his power armour, kicking out at the genestealer impaled on Kasdrubal’s tulwar. The xenos creature slid off the blade at last, and Dacius opened up enough space to fire three shells into its central mass.

‘Not done yet!’ roared Kasdrubal. ‘I don’t have to run to fight! Prop me up, brothers! I’ll cut these vermin down!’

The White Scar’s leg was a mangled ruin. Several gaping slashes had opened up in his chest and shoulder, and another down the side of his face exposed the bones of his cheek and jaw. Dacius threw Kasdrubal’s wounded arm over his shoulder to hold him up, leaving Kasdrubal’s other arm free to wield his power sword.

Gothardus was on one knee, firing up into the trees. A genestealer fell, trailing gore. The Dark Angel switched to his regular ammo magazine and fired on full-auto, blasting two arms off the creature before it could leap to its feet.

Dacius checked his bolter’s load. He had four hellfire shells left.

‘That’s why I draw the sword first,’ said Kasdrubal. ‘It never has to reload.’

He smiled, and his face split open.

Dacius could not see the blade that sliced out through the White Scar’s face, but he could see the blood that ran down its razor edge. Behind Kasdrubal, the distorted blur of the Shadow of the Saints descended, unfolding in a broken kaleidoscope like the facets of a living gemstone. It reflected the foliage of the trees and the blood spraying from Kasdrubal’s sundered skull. The flashes from the kill-team’s bolters refracted through its panels of light.

Dacius let go of Kasdrubal and rolled instinctively away from the Shadow, feeling a blade sweeping just over his head. His last hellfire shells ripped up into the shape, but he saw no eruptions of acid and gore. Perhaps he had missed. Perhaps the creature was simply too tough to be killed by the volley.

Dacius was aware of another of the kill-team diving past him, not away from the assailant but towards it. He caught the flash of red and yellow, the heraldry of the Howling Griffons, and knew it was Sergeant Orias. Dacius flicked his ammo selector and rolled to his knee, and hammered half a magazine up into the blur of furious motion above him.

Though he could not make out its details, he could feel the Shadow of the Saints turning its attention to him. Somewhere in there, xenos eyes were focusing on him.

The blue-white of a power field burst behind the creature. It was Kasdrubal’s discarded tulwar, in Orias’ hand as the sergeant hacked into the enemy.

Purple ichor spurted. Something thumped to the ground. The Shadow of the Saints let out a high, screeching wail, and its hazy form flitted up into the trees. It leapt from bough to bough, followed by chains of fire from Dacius and Gothardus as it merged with the motion of the foliage and was gone.

Gothardus and Dacius backed up to one another, covering all angles with their boltguns. The genestealers were dead or gone, fled alongside the Shadow of the Saints. The bodies of Kasdrubal and Vaevic lay on the bloodstained grass. The smell of blood and bolter propellant mixed with the stink of the genestealers’ corpses.

Orias deactivated the tulwar’s power field. It smouldered with the Shadow’s blood. ‘They’ve fallen back,’ he said. ‘We hurt it.’

Dacius looked down at the portion of the Shadow that Orias had cut off – a limb that ended in a long, serrated blade of bone. The skin was covered in iridescent scales that shimmered blue. ‘Biological camouflage,’ he observed.

‘Clearly,’ said Gothardus. ‘Sergeant, your orders?’

‘We go after it,’ said Orias. ‘It’s wounded. It fled. It wants us as far away from it as possible. That means we get as close as we can.’

‘Unless it’s drawing us in,’ said Dacius. ‘Unless it was waiting for us here. It knew we would track it down, so it set a trap here.’

‘Now it is you who ascribes intelligence to these animals,’ said Gothardus.

‘Enough intelligence to kill two Space Marines,’ replied Dacius.

‘We go after it,’ repeated Orias. ‘This is our mission. This is our duty. If it lairs at the House Ophidias, that is where we shall go.’

‘I must take their gene-seed,’ said Dacius, indicating the bodies of Vaevic and Kasdrubal.

‘Of course,’ said Orias. ‘But without ceremony.’

Each Chapter had its rites for the dead. It was part of Dacius’ duty as an Apothecary in the Deathwatch to know and observe them when one of his battle-brothers fell. But even the most solemn rites of a Space Marine’s home world had to take second place to the realities of the battlefield.

Dacius knelt beside Kasdrubal. Though he had seen every form of ruination that could be visited on a human body, there was still something obscene to him about the false smile given to Kasdrubal by the massive wound bisecting his face. Dacius held the narthecium gauntlet against Kasdrubal’s throat and a specialised tool punched through the jointed armour. It withdrew again, taking with it the tiny gland containing the genetic instructions that turned a man into a Space Marine. This was the gene-seed, modelled after the genetic pattern of Kasdrubal’s primarch – Jaghatai Khan of the White Scars. Dacius placed the organ in one of his sample vials. It would be returned to the White Scars along with the account of Kasdrubal’s death.

Dacius did the same for Vaevic. The Hawk Lords primarch was Roboute Guilliman of the Ultramarines, for like Dacius’ own Patriarchs of Ulixis, the Hawk Lords had been created from Guilliman’s Ultramarines Legion. The organ he removed from Vaevic’s throat was very much like the one Dacius himself had. Guilliman’s genetic legacy was contained within that scrap of flesh. When it was sent back to the Hawk Lords, it would be implanted into a novice and used to create a new Space Marine. The reward of an Apothecary’s duty was the knowledge that a new Space Marine would one day take the place of the fallen, but kneeling on the bloodstained grass of the Weeping Gardens, that reward felt very far away to Dacius.

Orias led the way to the gates of the House Ophidias, still carrying Kasdrubal’s tulwar. The statuary of the house’s nobles glowered down from its walls.

‘The faces are obliterated,’ said Dacius, noting the way the statues’ facial features had been carved away. ‘And the names.’

‘Damnation of the memory,’ mused Gothardus. ‘Scoured from history so their heresy would be truly dead.’

Orias pushed against the massive bronze doors. They were barred, but with a shove he snapped the restraints holding them closed and they boomed open. The hall inside was dark, crossed with shafts of muted light from the dusty stained glass. The floor was covered in mosaics, as seemed the fashion in Spire Supremus, and the murals on the walls had details picked out in tarnished gold. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and one or two had fallen to shatter on the floor.

Skeletonised remains littered the room. Dacius could imagine their final moments from the way they had fallen, clustered around doorways and pieces of scanty cover, surrounded and cut down as they fired. The aristocracy’s purge had left them there to rot, and no one had remained alive from House Ophidias to take away the dead.

The three survivors of the kill-team moved warily across the open hall and into the structure. The House Ophidias estate was a grand conglomeration of audience chambers and lodgings, all drenched in such finery and overt expenditure it would have overwhelmed a visitor not used to the opulence. Dacius glanced through a doorway to see a feast hall with three long tables laid out, the food long decayed away to heaps of black mould. Another room was an art gallery with dozens of monumental paintings slashed or burned from their frames.

‘Blood,’ said Gothardus, kneeling next to a slick dark stain on the mosaic floor. ‘Fresh. It came this way.’

Dacius prodded one of the skeletonised corpses with his boot. It rolled over, the shreds of its dark-red House Ophidian uniform falling away to reveal the bones and shrivelled skin beneath. The body had three arms. The third was anchored by a shoulder joint that had grown out of the side of the ribcage.

‘Hybrids,’ said Dacius. ‘House Ophidias was a genestealer cult.’

‘Then the purge was righteous,’ said Orias.

‘But they were too late.’ Dacius looked from the skeleton to the murals covering the walls of this grand chamber – images of House Ophidias’ red-uniformed nobles and their good works among the people of the hive. They handed out food and stipends, took in the penniless and hopeless. Much was made of the medicae centres they ran, depicted as temples of mercy with the huddled masses of hivers crowding around them to give thanks and be healed.

This was how the hive fleet would come to Caediss. The genestealer cults, through mechanisms not yet fully understood by the Imperium, sprung up in the vanguard of the hive fleets. Their members were drawn in by promises of prosperity, protection, freedom, whatever the citizenry craved. Those members found themselves implanted with genestealer zygotes, giving rise to human-genestealer hybrids. The cult’s collective minds projected a psychic signal into the void, informing the tyranid fleets of which Imperial worlds were rich in biomass to be harvested.

The cult had taken root deep in the hive, led by House Ophidias. By the time the rest of the city had realised their deviance and purged them, the signal had already been sent, and the fleet was on its way. The vanguard organisms, the Shadow of the Saints and its genestealer cohorts, had come to roost in this place not just because it was abandoned, but because it had been the source of the signal that had brought them here.

Dacius imagined the hive fleet moving across the system towards Caediss. It was accompanied by a darkness in the void that blotted out the signal of the Astronomican, a deeper night falling over the blackness of space.

Much like the deeper darkness that now rippled across the murals of House Ophidias.

‘It’s here,’ said Dacius.

The Shadow leapt from the wall clear across the grand hall, alighting on a pillar. Dacius took aim and fired, but it was too fast and the arc of his bolter shots burst against the far wall.

‘Pin it down!’ yelled Orias. He had his bolt pistol in one hand, and Kasdrubal’s power sword in the other.

The Shadow leapt again onto the ceiling as fire from all three members of the kill-team streaked around it. If any of them hit home, they did not slow it down. It sprinted along the ceiling towards the huge chandelier of crystal and gold that had once doused the chamber in light.

Gothardus jumped to the side as the Shadow’s claws sheared through the chandelier’s chains. The whole thing fell straight towards the Dark Angel, who sprawled full-length on the floor to get out of its way. It crashed down two feet away from him, throwing shards of glass in every direction as if a bomb had gone off.

Gothardus rolled onto his back, ready to fire. But the Shadow was already on him. Dacius saw Gothardus’ breastplate buckling under the creature’s weight. The Dark Angel was almost lost in the distortion of space around him, the black of his armour and the dark green of his shoulder guard flickering among the storm of broken facets.

Gothardus powered the stock of his bolter up into the creature and struck a telling blow, for it bellowed and reeled off him.

‘I have broken more jaws than you have known years!’ yelled Gothardus, landing a kick in the centre of the camouflaged creature and driving it further back. ‘I am a champion duellist of the Rock! I have bested better than you!’

Orias ran at the creature, power sword alight. Dacius tried to draw aim, unable to pick out the creature’s mass as Gothardus dodged and parried with the body of his boltgun.

Orias slashed at the creature but a forelimb slammed into his chest and knocked him back. Gothardus opened up enough space to bring his boltgun to bear and fired a volley of shots into the Shadow of the Saints.

For a moment the camouflage flickered and Dacius could make out the hellish form of the creature. It was three times the height of a Space Marine. Its head sported a mass of red tentacles beneath a pair of narrow yellow eyes. From the back of its exoskeletal ribcage emerged a pair of limbs, one with a long scythe-like blade, the other ending in a cauterised stump where Orias had sliced it off. Two more forelimbs were tipped with talons, its rear limbs bunched with masses of muscle. What was not protected by plates of natural armour was covered in the camouflage-generating scales. The acid-dripping holes in its chest showed where Gothardus’ volley had hit home.

The remaining scythe blade speared down, as the light bent around the creature and its outline shattered once more. A spike of distorted light impaled Gothardus through the chest.

Gothardus tried to bring his bolter to bear again but the Shadow of the Saints threw him into the air, following him up with a leap that took it right to the ceiling. Dacius fired, but he could not tell if any of his bolter shells hit the target.

Gothardus hung in the air, stretched out as the Shadow gripped him around the neck and one ankle. He twisted, and yelled out once in anger and pain, and then his body parted with a metallic wrenching sound as the creature tore him in two.

‘Get out of the open!’ ordered Orias. ‘Fall back!’

Here in the grand hall, the Shadow could jump at them from any angle. Dacius followed the sergeant through an archway leading further into the House Ophidias estate, snatching up Gothardus’ fallen bolter as he ran.

He heard the two halves of Gothardus’ body thumping to the floor as he went.

Orias and Dacius emerged into a shrine. Every noble household had one in Spire Supremus. Dacius noted the robed statue of the Emperor that glowered down at the rows of pews. The statue had not two arms, but four. Perhaps House Ophidias had claimed it was to symbolise the many wondrous attributes of the Emperor, the way He was much more than a man. But Dacius knew now it was an obscene homage to the four-armed xenos who had corrupted House Ophidias. A pair of huge incense burners flanked the altar and Dacius could smell the dark, heady aroma. Their smoke must have filled the shrine at the height of their rituals, turning it into a murky scene of deeds the true Emperor could not be permitted to see.

Behind the altar was a ceiling-high stained-glass window, dark now, its muted colours depicting the same four-armed Emperor overlooking the cosmos, surrounded by immense fleets of spacecraft. They were not the cruisers and destroyers of the Imperial Navy, but sleek craft that more resembled something alive. The hive fleets, thought Dacius, summoned by the cult of House Ophidias to bring a terrible deliverance to Caediss.

Dacius checked the load in Gothardus’ bolter. It had three hellfire shells left. Of course the Dark Angel would have saved some shots, ever efficient. Dacius swapped out Gothardus’ hellfire magazine for his own empty one. It felt like his fallen battle-brother was still there, still fighting. They would fight the Shadow together.

‘It will come from above us,’ said Sergeant Orias.

Dacius listened for the scrabble of claws on marble. In the gloom of the shrine’s vaulted ceiling, there was nothing to see.

‘Lictor bioform,’ said Orias, as if rehearsing his debriefing. ‘Modified. Never seen one like this. The camouflage is perfect.’

‘The Astra Militarum tell stories,’ said Dacius. The words cut through the silence as they waited for the creature to attack again. There were no ways out of the shrine save the route they had come, directly into the creature’s waiting claws. ‘Tyranid assassin-beasts. Independent from the hive mind. They leave whole squads dead and vanish.’

‘I never faced one,’ said Orias. ‘You?’

‘Alas, no,’ said Dacius. ‘Genestealers on Noctis Terrae, Hive Fleet Gyges at Serrato Rift. Nothing like this.’

A fleck of marble clattered to the floor. Dacius swung his bolter in its direction, then aimed at the ceiling above. He still couldn’t make anything out.

The sound of shattering glass erupted behind him. Dacius turned to see the window exploding into the chapel, filling the chamber with multicoloured slivers. They broke against Sergeant Orias in a storm of shards and noise that banished the gloom and silence. Light refracted in every direction, a sensory overload that even a Space Marine could make no sense of.

Amid the storm was the Shadow of the Saints, its camouflaged outline further broken up by the flying glass. Dacius fired instinctively, sending half a magazine into the chaos. Orias swung, similarly by blind instinct, the energy field of the power sword flaring as the shards of glass impacted against it.

Orias was lifted into the air by an invisible force as the last of the broken glass skittered across the stone floor. Dacius fired again, perhaps hitting the mass of distortion beneath the sergeant, perhaps not.

Orias stabbed down with the tulwar. Its power field discharged into chitinous armour and for a moment the Shadow of the Saints was illuminated again. The blade punched in through its shoulder and ripped the joint open.

The Shadow’s tentacled maw opened wide. It closed over Orias’ head.

Dacius heard the crunch as the tyranid bit down. The Shadow’s camouflage rippled back into place and Orias’ head was gone, replaced with a vivid spray of blood.

The Shadow threw Orias’ headless corpse to the floor. Dacius kept up the fire, stitching bolter shells across the far wall. The creature was gone, leaping up into the gloom where Dacius’ enhanced vision could not quite penetrate enough to separate the Shadow from the ornate stonework around it.

Dacius backed between the pews towards the altar, passing Orias’ body where it had come to rest. The yellow and red of his Howling Griffons heraldry was masked with the thick scarlet of his blood. Dacius dared not look for too long.

He could mourn later. He could rage when his duty was done, or he was dead. For now, he had to fight.

His back was against the altar. The barrel of his bolter glowed a dull red from the continuous firing. He flicked the fire selector of his weapon to the hellfire magazine. Three shots, he thought. Normal bolter rounds did nothing. He had three chances.

Dacius saw the huge incense burner beside the altar. The incense had once filled the shrine with dense, opaque smoke. He was blind to the enemy’s location as it was. This would even the battlefield.

Dacius touched the hot barrel of his bolter to the mass of ash-like incense. It caught light immediately and a column of pungent grey smoke billowed upwards. In seconds it had wreathed the altar and the statue, and rolled out to fill the front half of the shrine.

Dacius’ third lung activated. His other two, the two he had been born with, shut down as the third took over, filtering out the incense that would have choked anyone else. His hearts pumped faster to compensate for the lower oxygenation. The incense must have rendered the worshippers light-headed and confused, the better for the cult to implant ideas into their heads. But Dacius had never been sharper.

The shape came at him through the darkness. The opaque smoke swirled around it, outlining its shape: its ribcage with its crater-like bullet wounds, its severed claw limb and the shoulder wound Orias had dealt it. The tentacles around its mouth, the elongated skull and clawed forelimbs.

The scythe blade was aimed to bisect him at the waist. Dacius leapt over it, onto the altar. The blade sliced deep into the stone as the Shadow of the Saints crashed home.

Dacius fired into its chest. The shot bored deep into the ribcage and burst inside, spraying acid and gore from the wound. One chance gone.

The creature reeled. Dacius leapt over it and hit the ground rolling, firing again at the muscular leg he could see clearly defined by the billows of the smoke. The shot hit the knee joint, blowing it apart in a shower of acid.

Second chance gone.

The Shadow rounded on him, aiming to spear him with a downward thrust of its blade. But its leg buckled underneath it and it toppled over.

Dacius put out a hand to catch the falling creature by the throat. Its weight was enormous, but so was a Space Marine’s strength. Dacius forced the barrel of his bolter under the mass of writhing tentacles and up against the Shadow’s throat.

He wanted to curse the creature, to make it understand the suffering owed to it by the human race. He wanted it to remember the names of his fallen brothers: Kasdrubal, Vaevic, Gothardus and Orias. But the tyranids could never understand the mind of a human, no more than a human could understand them. So Dacius pulled the trigger.

The last hellfire shell punched through the base of the creature’s skull and detonated in its cranium. Its head was blown wide open and the pulpy mass of brain ejected in a glistening torrent over the statue of the four-armed Emperor.

The Shadow of the Saints writhed and struggled in its death throes. The tentacles slathered at Dacius’ face and its forelimbs raked at his armour. But with every second its strength waned and even its most animal instincts sparked out. Finally, it fell still, and was nothing more than a dead weight.

Dacius rolled the corpse off him. Its camouflage faded from it, and he could see its full horror. He had never seen anything so alien, so inhuman. He took a specimen vial and scooped up a sample of its brain matter, then other samples from the organs exposed by the hellfire wounds in its chest and the camouflage-generating scales on its skin.

He filled all but three of his remaining vials with samples from the Shadow of the Saints. Next he attended to Sergeant Orias’ body. Now his mission was complete, he could see to the duties of an Apothecary. With a care and solemnity the fight with the tyranid vanguard had not permitted, he began the task of harvesting the gene-seed from his fallen brothers.

Lord Inquisitor Vorts of the Ordo Xenos watched the sun rising over Caediss from orbit. The curved sliver of light shone in many colours, filtered by the industrial pollution generated by the planet’s hives. Vorts wore a set of antique carapace armour, dull gold wrought into lions’ heads and sunbursts, under a heavy cloak of xenos hide. The emblem of the Inquisition, the stylised ‘I’ of the Holy Orders made of ruby and obsidian, hung around his neck. His face was dark and lined, and his scalp was pocked with neural interface sockets.

He regarded the small glass vial in his hand. It was full of purplish biological tissue. ‘The brain was of some use,’ he said, as if to himself. ‘The genetor cultured it for a few hours. They had never seen such complex neural pathway potential. Most fascinating, from an academic viewpoint. But the organs of respiration! That was the real treasure.’

He looked to the figure standing behind him on the bridge of his command ship. Though the Space Marine was significantly taller and broader than Vorts, he was eclipsed by the presence and authority radiating from the inquisitor. ‘As an Apothecary, you can appreciate its significance, I am sure. The virus strain we carry with us needs only a little adaptation to match this splinter fleet’s breathing membranes perfectly.’

‘That is fortuitous,’ said Dacius.

‘Apothecary Dacius, it is poetry!’ Vorts turned to the image of the planet through the bridge viewscreen again. ‘The timing must be right. Once the tyranids have begun to harvest biomass, the virus bombardment will begin. The strain will be transmitted back to the hive ships. The whole fleet will die.’

‘And the population?’

A look of faint surprise passed over Vorts’ face, as if the question was ridiculous. ‘They will die,’ he said. ‘Those who survive the first stages of the invasion, at least. Does this concern you, Brother Dacius?’

‘We fought to preserve them,’ replied Dacius.

‘And to acquire the samples the genetor required,’ replied Vorts briskly. ‘Restoring chain of command to the planetary defence forces was a secondary objective. Their resistance will force the commitment of more tyranid bioforms to the surface, and maximise the transmission of the virus. Do their deaths cause you distress, brother? I had not thought you a sentimental soul. The Deathwatch makes a point of not recruiting them.’

‘They can win,’ replied Dacius.

‘Oh, I doubt it.’

‘The planetary defence forces can mount a defence of the landing sites. That will give you enough time to summon the rest of my watchtower. The Deathwatch can turn the battle. We have brethren to avenge. The people of Caediss deserve a chance.’

‘So, we come to the crux of things. A Space Marine’s duty to humanity. So many millions dead weigh on his soul. The Inquisition must look beyond these things, brother. To the grander picture. To the–’

‘They can win,’ repeated Dacius. ‘Caediss can survive. Its people are brave. They purged a genestealer infestation themselves, before we even arrived. They deserve the chance to fight for their survival alongside the Deathwatch. If they fail, your virus bombs will still be here. But if they can break the point of the invasion’s spear, the hive mind will commit more to the fight. By then Caediss will have been reinforced and we can force the tyranids to spend more biomass than this planet is worth. We will harm the tyranids more than a single splinter fleet’s loss ever could. If you let it happen, inquisitor. If you give them the chance.’ Dacius shrugged. ‘And if it fails, launch the Exterminatus.’

Vorts considered this for a long moment, watching the dawn creep across the disc of Caediss. ‘An interesting proposition. It would be intriguing to see how well this planet fares. It is rare to observe the mechanisms of invasion so directly.’ He waved a hand, as if dismissing an aide. ‘They shall have their chance. I shall watch, with my finger on the button.’ He turned again to Dacius. ‘And you?’

‘I shall be on the surface, fighting beside them.’

‘Of course,’ said Vorts. ‘Your duty.’

‘If I may have leave to…’

‘By all means! By all means, Brother Dacius, be on your way! I dare say it will not be long before the spores start to fall.’

Dacius bowed, and turned to leave the bridge. It would be a short shuttle journey to the planet below, where the regiments of the planetary defence force were already talking about the Shadow of the Saints and how the Angels of Death, the Emperor’s Space Marines, had banished it back to the realm of myth. They would gather around a Space Marine as if he were a standard planted in the ground. They would see in him a talisman of victory. A symbol of hope that the Kraken, the Great Devourer, the tyranids, could be beaten.

Dacius had a full magazine of hellfire shells and the knowledge of how one Shadow of the Saints had been beaten. He would do it again.

THE CRUELTYMAKER’S KINGDOM

Marc Collins

‘Brother?’

It is the voice that first stirs him, the insistent urgency of it. He feels hands grip him, shaking him. The rattle of his armour against wet stone grinds at his senses, and the voice comes again. ‘Watch-captain!’

He knows the voice; they have fought alongside each other a hundred times. It is Garout who speaks, Garout of Fenris and the Allwinter. As cold and pitiless as the sea, as warm as a hearthfire. ‘You have to wake. Phal!’

Atticus Phal takes one harsh gulping breath and tastes the corpse-stale air. For a moment, he forgets where he is. This is not the recycled atmosphere of the Wrath Obsidian. Everything here reeks of death, an abattoir of sun-dried carrion. He forces his eyes open and sees the organ pit – lit by anaemic starlight and the strangeness of the world beyond, the erratic lambency of the aeldari’s labyrinth realm. Bloody water laps at him, its residue crusting in the crevices of his plate like rust. He focuses, finds Garout again, seeking answers.

The answers do not come. What looks back at him is a mockery with a brother’s face. Half of that face is gone, stolen away by a precise blade stroke. Garout blinks his one remaining eye, tilts his head like a hunting hound.

‘Skitja, but you are hard to kill, Phal.’ The hint of a smile plays across his crimsoned lips; Phal can see the muscles flexing bloodlessly in the head wound. ‘Harder than the rest of us, anyway.’

Phal does not fear it. He is incapable. He feels pain spreading through him, a dull ache where his oolitic kidney struggles, sharper again in his chest and neck. He tastes blood and bile, high in his throat.

Poison. Drukhari and their venoms, he thinks. That is why I see him. That is why he is here. A fever ghost. A dream. Nothing more. Nothing.

Phal closes his eyes, digs his hands into the water until he feels something solid, and pushes himself up. When he opens them again, Garout is gone. There is no hand on his pauldron, no encouragement from the dead. There is only the low rumble as more organic detritus slides from apertures above, the liquid spatter as it impacts. ‘Rest, brother.’ Phal allows himself the words, the moment. ‘You died on red snow, with the enemy’s throat almost in your teeth. Your ancestors would smile.’

Phal does not smile. He cannot bring himself to. Around him lie the bodies of his brothers, mutilated and ruined. The other half of Garout’s face stares up without seeing. Beside it lies the bisected hulk of Damon; the Minotaur’s legs are gone, leaving only a smear of coagulated blood and the void where organs once sat. Antonius has been robbed of his armour and his skin, to the point that the Hospitaller is barely recognisable; Phal can only assume his identity through bone structure, and the fact that the last of their number lies slumped against the chamber wall. They have taken Jarod’s limbs.

No. He has taken them.

The noble Lion Warrior deserved better. It is an insult that Phal cannot allow to rest.

The memories do not come easily. Pain saturates him, mind and body. Phal clenches his fists. He remembers the Wrath Obsidian. He remembers their mission: to run down their quarry, a twisted thing that hunted his transhuman kin. He closes his eyes, and can feel the ship dying around them – caught in the xenos web. The mocking laughter as they are taken apart, one by one. The cruel leering face, pale and ancient. Utterly corrupt.

‘Erastikhus.’ He speaks the name with loathing, all the hatred he can muster compacted in one single word. ‘Erastikhus. Haemonculus. Drukhari.’ He staggers to the ragged shore of flesh, feeling it yield under his tread. Perhaps it had once merely been formed from the bodies of his victims, but no longer. It has grown, flowed, colonising these depths with questing fingers of opportunistic rot. It is not a thing tolerated, but cultivated. Tendrils of it coil up around the structures, and sheets of it sprawl underfoot. Disgust is too shallow a word to describe what he feels for this place.

But then there is sound, and movement. He ducks into the shadows cast by the long fluted structures that frame the pit like the blackened spars of ribs. The darkness of the place embraces him, his black armour melding effortlessly into the murk. He can hear his own breathing, its ragged echo in his ears. Closing his eyes, he attempts to still himself, to become as stone, unmoving, unyielding. He feels his own laboured respiration wane, even as something else draws in breath, and begins to speak.

‘We should not be hiding, watch-captain. To hide is as craven as to fear and flee. We should stand before them, burning with the Emperor’s wrath.’ Damon’s voice is a hissing, broken thing. It is not the bombast of the parade ground, or the exultation of the sparring halls. Not any more. His lower half is, mercifully, hidden in the Stygian dark, but what remains is lit by some inner radiance. It is as though the Minotaur is burning from the inside out, kindled by his own rage.

‘You never did know when to augment your strategy.’ Phal shakes his head, engaging despite himself. ‘There are many ways to victory – that, I have learned in the years of my vigil.’

‘You are still a son of Dorn, Atticus. A scion of Sigismund. Yours is the crusade eternal, is it not? Hot blood on your face, and the enemy driven before you – every step of the way. Does that not still hold true?’ Damon breaks into rasping laughter, and Phal smells the cooking-meat stench of his impossible breath. The shade is right. He is a Black Templar, but he has exchanged one crusade for another. The years have changed him since he made his oaths amongst his Chapter brothers, in sight of the sword. Now, he waits and watches. He leans back, as a wall dilates open and a pair of lithe figures slink into the pit.

Their armour is mismatched, ragtag. They advance slowly, methodically, turning at every strange noise and pausing at each vaguely interesting pile of flotsam. Scavengers, he thinks, come to pick over our bones. He feels, is certain he feels, the kill-urge rising from Damon at his side. Phal turns, and the figment is gone. Only his determination endures, the relentless wrath that carried them through dozens of combat missions. He needs that fire now, in his own struggling hearts.

He can hear their lilting voices, the drifting sibilance of the drukhari tongue. It sickens him, yet he understands it; a watch-captain of the Deathwatch must know many things lesser men think unclean. These creatures seek whatever small advantage they can wring from their master’s distant table. They are beggars in the kingdom of an exile, and Phal knows they speak of his quarry. Erastikhus. Pain-bringer. Architect of his agony, and maker of cruelty.

These drukhari are only shadows cast by that dark candle, and so they are nothing to him.

Phal lunges from the darkness, a hulking shadow suddenly in motion. His arms wrap around the neck of the first scavenger, already turning into his arc. He jerks hard to one side, and there is the crack of xenos bones. His hand goes low before the body falls, and he pulls a knife from its belt. The blade is black like volcanic glass, curved and barbed to inflict the maximum amount of pain, to make wounds that never close. He drives it up, through the mongrel plate of the second scavenger. He sees its pale face contort in surprise and sudden excruciation. Its breath hisses from between its pale teeth, and from the wound in its lungs. The blade is caught against bone inside its chest cavity and he pulls hard, bringing the xenos face to face with him. He lets it see him: the bronze of his skin, the pale scars that curve across his cheeks, the black of his armour – like a declaration of purpose.

It beholds a warrior of the Emperor. Death itself, ablaze with righteous anger.

‘Erastikhus.’ He sullies himself with the alien’s vulgar speech. ‘Where is he? Where is your master?’ It scrabbles for a moment, clawing in futility against his armour. Determined struggle becomes weak pawing, palms slapping against the plates like floodwaters against a dam.

‘Up.’ It breathes and he lets the knife twist, drawing its last words out in a drawl of pain. ‘The Idyll…’

The Idyll is a thing of cruel beauty. To see it is one thing, but to know and understand it is to truly appreciate what Erastikhus has wrought. Phal understands now, as he digs his fingers into the greyish meat before him and raises it to his lips. The memories bleed from it slowly, oozing into his system with the alien tang of the brain matter. The scavenger was called Crisix, fallen from favour and shunned by its peers. Its knowledge of the Idyll is limited to these murky depths and the central belt, but it is enough for Phal to formulate a plan of attack.

Viewed from without, the Idyll is a diamond of thin black strands, woven together like the nest of a bird. A weakling star lies at its core, haemorrhaging light and heat into the surroundings, fielded and veiled as its power is siphoned. This place is old, older than Erastikhus’ occupation, tucked away in its corner of the webway, mouldering and attracting the usual detritus as it does. Mercenaries. Opportunists. Scavengers.

Phal braces himself against the wall as the stolen knowledge uncurls inside him. He reaches up to his neck, to the stinging pain and an absence born of violation. A dull ache in his chest mirrors it. He closes his eyes, and feels another hand against the wound – gingerly, respectfully assessing. Someone clicks their tongue with an almost grandfatherly air, tutting as they lean closer. He can smell counterseptic and the chill odour of preservatives, though there is no way they can truly be here.

‘He has wounded you deep.’ Crisply accented words find his ears, and when he looks up it is Antonius he sees. Although the warrior is, mercifully, armoured, there is so much blood streaking the plate that he wears his condition plainly. ‘Carefully, but deep. I feel for you, brother. We too have known the loss.’

The progenoids. Phal stiffens at the thought, then begins to shake. He has been robbed of his legacy. His genetic stock will not return to the Chapter; instead it will rot in the talons of the xenos. There can be no greater insult, no deeper cut. He clenches his fists so tightly that he fears the blade will shatter like true glass. He drives his fist into the wall, though it leaves no mark.

‘He dies for this,’ Phal growls softly. ‘For what he has done to all of us.’ The shadows of the pit move about him, unfolding their own phantoms. Antonius’ hand slips away, as though disappointed. Damon and Garout watch him approvingly, harbingers of his wrath. His hands are too empty, yearning for the comfort of a bolter or the reassuring weight of his sword. He turns the dagger over in his hand, able to get the measure of it. It is not Weeper, not the blade that carried him from crusade to vigil. That weapon has no equal here.

‘Up, then.’ He growls, but the spectres have fled. He speaks only to himself. ‘We go up.’

The lower chambers are badly maintained. Sludge clings to his boots as he passes through half-flooded oubliettes and forces jammed doorways. Everything is crusted with muck and gore – the butcher’s leavings of years of thoughtless savagery. He moves up and along the outer edges of the structure, guided by the whisper of imbibed wisdom. Every now and then a surety will ghost across his thoughts at an intersection.

Armoury. Dock. Flensing chamber.

The casual cruelty before him is so utterly at odds with humanity’s absolute and exacting judgement. Whatever poison laid their species low is marrow-deep in the drukhari, obliterating even the pretence of nobility. There is only the arrogance, cut into their very souls, rendering them little more than gross parodies of what they might once have been. It does not matter, though. Whatever they are, whatever they have become, they will be ended.

The outer spans have begun to change, slowly altering from red-rimmed bone to a deep and abiding black. The smooth spurs have sharpened until festooned with thorns. There are deeper stains here, where blood or rot has seeped into the fabric of it. The leavings of shrikes. The thought comes unbidden, another echo of Crisix.

Phal winces, braces himself against one of the dark protrusions. He can hear the distant thunder of wings, growing louder. He throws himself against the wall, and the storm breaks around him.

Scourges, they are called. He hears the scrape and clatter of clawed feet as they glance across the outer reaches of the Idyll. Their tortured, lilting song shifts, to fill the air with demented cawing and jeering. Erastikhus has robbed them of their voices, and instead they sing. Phal sees no beauty there, only perversion and desecration.

‘Erastikhus builds a menagerie – a place of the mad and the broken,’ Garout hisses in his ear, and Phal wonders if he speaks of the scourges alone, or whether he counts his brothers amongst that number. He can feel the harsh edges of his body and mind straining against his armour, scratching against the inside of his skull. Phal bites it back, holds perfectly still.

The air is a riot of iridescent feathers. More roil in the void beyond. Some of the scourges have stopped, perching on the beams at the Idyll’s edge, their shadows long and warped by the inconstant light. He can hear their taloned limbs as they claw at the black bones of the structure, as though they seek to sharpen themselves yet further. They keen and croon into the forever dusk, before the flock begins to move again, and then they are in motion. Out, away across the tortured expanse of space, and into the void and the higher reaches.

‘We should have slain one.’ Jarod’s voice is cool, his words measured. The Lion Warrior crouches near to Phal, poised like a prowling felid. His limbs are indistinct, shadows, awkwardly shifting with the memory of movement. Jarod’s pale golden gaze holds him, and Phal leans closer as the warrior whispers. ‘On the world of my birth, there were avians of that character. They would pin vermin to the razorthorn. This Erastikhus, these drukhari, they are larderjacks. They think us vermin. They think us pinned for their nourishment and amusement. Are you prey, watch-captain?’

‘I am not, brother.’ Phal pushes off the wall and centres himself anew. His fingers trace along the edge of the blade, testing its keenness. He will need new equipment soon; his own would be the ideal, but anything that brings him closer to his goal will suffice.

Another doorway gapes, artfully carved in imitation of a bestial snarl. He passes through it, and the change seems instant. The air is cleaner here, the surfaces more polished: smooth, devoid of the exterior barbs. Long dark thoroughfares weave across the structure, columns gleaming like oil on water in the dappled starlight. ‘Never prey,’ he whispers again, and crouches low.

Phal hears the enemy before he sees them, the clatter of boots against the wraith-stuff of the Idyll. Eight of them march, two by two – an unnecessary show of force from Erastikhus’ mercenaries, playing at being true kabalites. This mongrel horde will not protect him. He could cross a hundred palms with tainted silver, and forge whatever alliance of outcasts he can muster, but it will avail him nothing. Phal knows this, as he slips from pillar to pillar, from shadow to shadow.

They have not noticed him yet, as they parade from one end of the bridge to the other, pausing at the edges and then repeating their course. He likens them to automata, locked in their cycles, tormented by tedium. He can see hands flex as they raise their weapons, the bladed edges ready to do violence. They are eager, yet leashed. The monster they serve has likely promised them that one day, soon, they will be loosed on worlds beyond count or perhaps in triumphant return to their fell capital, their Dark City.

‘Now is the time to act,’ whispers Garout. ‘A better weapon, one that bears a taint but a weapon nonetheless. Turn their poison against them, brother.’

Phal shakes his head fiercely, feeling bile in his throat. The unclean and unworthy weaponry he bears already grates against his soul. It is only necessity that dampens this sin, and the whispers of ghosts that guide his hand.

‘You have to kill them.’ Phal winces at the intensity of Damon’s snarl of hatred. The heat of his breath is at his ear. Phal knows what he has to do, his training guiding him towards it for decades. He is one warrior, a transhuman instrument of death. The odds of victory here are almost certain. The likelihood of overall triumph rests upon a knife edge.

‘If I risk too much, we lose Erastikhus,’ Phal whispers. ‘We could lose everything.’ He lifts the blade, readying himself. ‘But nothing of value comes without risk.’ He can see Antonius and Jarod as they move to his side. They too are ready. Their caution has evaporated; each of them is the model of what it is to be Astartes, and together they are more than the sum of their parts.

They are a kill-team.

When Phal makes his move, his enemy’s backs are to him. He times it so. They react too slowly, and he is advancing faster than his bulk would suggest possible. His brothers move with him, in easy lockstep. He remembers the times they have done this previously: the burning of the butcher-warrens of the Innerwyrm, the purgation of the greenskin asteroid forts around Castama. They have fought a thousand battles, in a hundred wars. They are a black blade, holding the line against the future. This moment is no different, even if he is truly alone. He can hear them as they advance. Their savage war cries ring in his ear, and he hears bolter fire in one impossible moment.

The enemy do not die by mass-reactive shells; they die as he careens into them. Phal goes low first, driving the blade between armoured plates, hobbling his first foe. His momentum knocks the warrior sprawling, and he rises and spins before the rest can react. They are fast, but not that fast. The blade is dripping with stinking xenos blood, and he baptises it again. He hammers it upwards, under the second mercenary’s chin. The creature drops its rifle, scrabbling at its wounded throat. He pitches it to one side, off the bridge and into the ever-present dusk. Somewhere below he hears the shrill of birdsong, hungry and agitated.

He slams the back of one armoured fist into the helm of another mercenary as it turns, and then drops again, grabbing up the splinter rifle from the shimmering black floor. He turns it and slams the bladed barrel end into the side of his opponent. Armour tears in a welter of blood and shards. Phal growls, low in his throat; he hears the ululations of his brothers. ‘This is how you die.’ He spits the words like venom. ‘This is how you will all die! Broken at the feet of your betters! Of humanity triumphant!’

The rearmost four are falling back, but the one to the side of his victim swings at him with the rifle’s edge. Phal brings his own up and they collide with a clatter of sparks. There is the whine of blade against monomolecular blade, before the air fills with the whispered hiss of crystalline shots. He forces his rifle against the rifle of his foe, yanking him round as the arc of fire finds them. The warrior squeals as shards puncture it. It starts to hunch forward in pain, before Phal grabs it and holds it in place. The shots ricochet off or penetrate his makeshift once-living shield almost at random. He feels some shatter against his armour, until one buries its way into his right arm. The neurotoxins sear his already ravaged body and he falters for a second, stumbling, almost dropping the rifle and the body.

Hands brace him, hooking under his arms to lift him up again. He can feel strength swell in his muscles. A hand slaps reassuringly against his pauldron, and he grits his teeth and hefts the rifle up. He catches the fleeting sound of a whispered kindness and pushes forward harder. His boots ring with thunder as he storms on, casting the alien carcass from the weapon and opening fire. The air fills with his borrowed fury, glistening death catching the first two warriors across the breastplates. They stagger from the initial glancing shots, before the second volley punches through. He can hear them choking in their sealed helms, lenses flaring bright and urgent in their death masks, like jewels on an ancient sarcophagus.

They fall.

He moves. The winds of the non-space whip at him as he sprints into their midst, driving an elbow hard enough into the sternum of one of the last and watching it crumble, while he lashes out with the bladed edge of the rifle. He cleaves the other open from groin to crown, and it bursts apart, practically detonating. He turns, venting his rage with a series of sharp kicks and punches. He feels armour give beneath his boot and throws his full force behind the last blow. The body tumbles with a muted shriek.

Silence reigns. Even the hellish birds have fallen still, as though awed.

He loots the bodies for whatever he can use – ammunition, grenades, a fresh blade. He leans on the rifle as he does, bracing himself as he searches each corpse and then casts it over into the abyss. He hears approving mutters from behind him as each body spirals out of sight.

‘A fine cast. Were you upon the ice we would say you were kraken-hunting,’ Garout chuckles dryly. ‘Though your bait could use a little more meat on their bones.’

‘I am not hunting kraken, Garout. These are unworthy bait, yes, but they are merely obstacles to be overcome. Between us and him.’

‘Erastikhus.’ Antonius speaks the name as he kneels close, all caution and concern. ‘You know where he must be.’ The shade gestures ahead of them, where the bridge crosses with other central spans. The mid-space is dominated by clusters of tapered ovoids, nestled like seeds in fruit. Walkways and thoroughfares wind up around them from one row to another, but it is the centre that draws his eye. A great needle of grey-white psycho-plastic winds heavenward, connecting to the apex of the Idyll. Vanity demands that Erastikhus nests there, setting himself above all other beings.

‘That is where he goes to ground, and that is where we shall cast him from. As with the slaves, so with the master.’ Phal can hear the smile in Jarod’s voice, and knows that he is right. I am right, I know, and so he knows. Jarod is dead, they are all dead, but by the God-Emperor I need them. He shakes himself, bites back thoughts and words. He pushes himself up and stands on the bridge. He looks around, and they are gone.

Once again he stands alone.

Phal advances slowly, setting a determined pace, until he comes to the first of the lower tier of chambers. There is no more stolen remembrance, suggesting that these chambers hold secrets beyond the privilege afforded to the scavenger Crisix. There are no patrols yet, no one to oppose his ingress. Phal cautiously advances around the exterior of the first pod, peering around the edge in search of a doorway or more of the foe. The wind has died down this close to the central structures; he can feel the gently directed starlight lapping at him as it warms the pods. This place has value, to be the focus of such efforts. He pauses. Another sound rises, a low wail. At first he thinks it might be a shift in airflow, or some mechanism, but then he recognises it.

The low burr of mortal pain.

It throbs out from the structure in irregular waves. He can feel it, pulsing through the wraithbone he braces himself against. It is arrhythmic, drawing him in and then pushing against him – as though he were a splinter to be forced out. If there is pain, I walk the right path. The thought is fleeting, poison, and yet it comes. His absent brothers do not echo it. He is himself again, pure of purpose, clear of mind. He clings to his hate, trusting in its honesty. No pity. No remorse. No fear. That is what the Chapter taught him, before he took his vigil – when he fought the enemies of humanity in the vanguard of the eternal crusade.

He thinks of it often, the brothers he left behind for this most holy duty. There would be no judgement from them, for there are many ways to honour the God-Emperor of Mankind. He will serve, fight and die in service to the Throne. Wearing sacred black and driving the enemy before him, as a true heir of Sigismund. There can be no other way.

Phal’s slow advance brings him to an entrance at last, a tall doorway cut into the exterior, yawning in a silent scream. Spike-fangs hang from its arch in hollow threat. A promise of violence to enemies, and a warning to prey. You shall be devoured here, it says. You are our meat and our wine.

To stand as a warrior of the Emperor is to defy such claims. Phal has fought the drukhari before, routing them like the vermin they are. He has stood against the horrors of the hive fleets, living to fight again. Even now, he drags himself from the pit to fight once more and avenge the debt of honour. Complete the mission.

The chamber is squat, rotund and crowded with xenos implements of woe. Some are esoteric and unrecognisable – save that, like so much of drukhari culture, they are shaped for cruelty. Others have more familiar shapes, instruments as old as time. Rack and chain, hook and blade.

And of course, there are the cages.

Too small for their occupants, they are crushed along one wall, like a kennel for beasts. The contents are hideously diverse. Phal spies the grey skin of a t’au, the predatory mass of an ork pressing itself against bars it has tried too many times to mangle. There are humans too, wasted and withered and barely deserving of the name. He looks at them, these two men, wondering what circumstances brought them to this end. Were they soldiers? Civilians? Had they been plucked from a ship as he had, or reaped from one of the Emperor’s worlds? In the end it does not matter. They are here, just as he is. They gawp up at him, jaws slack and eyes wide. Despite their obvious malnutrition they scrabble forward, suddenly eager. The first to speak is a small man, jittery with cold and fear. His eyes dart, and he is constantly wringing his hands, or bringing them up over his shaved scalp.

‘You came. You came. An angel came, Willem. The Emperor has sent one of His angels to save us. Oh thank you, lord. Thank you.’

‘Do not thank me yet.’ Phal towers over the men, and they shrink away from him – as though suddenly realising just how dangerous he is. He places his hand against the bars and rattles them. He could take the cage apart with ease; the question becomes whether or not he should. ‘How did you come to be here?’

‘Taken, lord,’ the man whimpers. ‘I… I am Silas, and this is Willem.’ He gestures to the other man. ‘Local defence, on an agri world. The Agrastan Tenth. Till the skies opened…’ He trails off, body contorting with terror. ‘We tried to fight, we did. They emptied the township. We’re the last. They take the others. They never come back. Screams from above… horrors.’ The man buries his face in his hands, blubbering. Phal looks away. Such mortal weakness shames him. It shames them all.

‘Such specimens as this are the flesh and blood of the Allfather’s realm.’ Garout has come up alongside him again. The Space Wolf kneels, his halved visage flexing into a smile. His red braids shake with the effort, as he leans one way and then the other to scrutinise the captives. ‘They have worth, while they have life.’

‘But we cannot save them,’ Damon whispers. His arms are folded as he stands in judgement. ‘They are weak and they are wanting.’

‘They are the Emperor’s servants. Sacred lives,’ Antonius offers, before Jarod snorts and interjects.

‘There is only the hunt, brothers. Whether across the open plains, or the void’s expanse. Even here, beyond eternity, we hunt.’ There is fire in his words. The shades begin to bicker and argue, their opinions bleeding over one another even as Silas continues to sob. The sounds grate as they blend and clash. Phal bites back a snarl, and then rounds on suddenly empty air.

‘Be silent!’

Silas’ head snaps up as though struck, his cries dying in his throat. He coughs, choking at the sudden shock. The man’s eyes bulge, red-rimmed and terrified at an angel’s rage. Apologies pour from him, and he throws himself prostrate on the ground. His companion hunkers low at his side.

Phal shakes his head. He does not wish to be a figure of fear to them, to be dreaded as their captors are. He collects himself, his breathing measured. He begins to speak.

‘Forgive me. This war has taken its toll upon me, as it has on your people. I have lost my brothers, and much of myself. Duty demands that I avenge them and redeem my honour.’ He kneels closer to the men abasing themselves before him, his voice gentle. ‘I cannot save you, not truly. If I free you, then you will likely die in the crossfire. There may not even be a way beyond this realm. I do not expect to survive. If the Emperor is with us, then justice shall be meted out, and none need suffer as you have suffered.’

The men stare at him impassively. For a moment he fears they do not hear him, that dread of the transhuman is robbing them of their reason. He lifts one of the grenades he took, and holds it out to Silas. With his other hand he takes hold of the cage and pulls. The bars distend with a torturous squeal. The door thuds as it hits the ground.

‘This is the only salvation I can offer you, this chance. The enemy will return – they may come seeking me. When they do, if they find you, this shall be your sword. The fire shall cleanse them of their impurity, and it shall set you free. Though you die, you do so knowing that it is a death worthy of a subject of the Emperor.’

‘I…’ Silas draws in a ragged breath, and then stands. He forces himself to unsteady feet, and fixes Phal with his gaze. He no longer weeps, but merely holds his hand out to the giant. ‘We will make our best attempt. If they come for us, we shall throw it. We will spit our rage in their faces. We shall say the names of our lost friends and kin. They will remember us.’

Phal does not hand over the grenade. Instead, he takes the man’s shaking hand.

‘You are a true son of the Emperor, Silas. He watches you, even now.’ The man nods, and Phal hands him the explosive.

‘May you be guided by His hand, as He guided you to us.’

Phal moves out and up, through hanging support gantries, surer now. Their plight is hopeless, but the injustices delivered upon them by Erastikhus cannot stand. They did not see my brothers. The thought rises unbidden, lingering in his mind. Perhaps he is going mad, or the poison still affects him. May you be guided by His hand…

Perhaps I am guided, Phal thinks as he raises the rifle again, moving up and into cover. The higher tiers of chambers seem grander somehow, the surfaces whorled and barbed with coaxed growths. He can see the great bridges that link the outer reaches to the centre. The weight of the place is oppressive – he can practically feel Erastikhus’ xenos scrutiny upon him, assessing him like meat upon the block.

The first sirens begin to wail, high and shrill at a level normal human ears could never hope to process. It screams across his consciousness in a sick migraine flare, before he adapts his hearing. Boots clatter against flooring as troops flood in somewhere below, patrols converging. Either they have noticed their missing fellows or his intrusion into the prison triggered some eldritch alarm. It no longer matters.

A low whine builds, blossoming to a more audible exultation. He hears a distant shout of defiant rage, pushing through mortal weakness to spite death. The serpent’s hiss of splinter fire cannot drown out what comes next. The detonation erupts in a sudden gale. A flash of light and heat rushes up from below, a bridge away; its fury makes the structure shudder, and for a moment Phal fears they shall shake loose and tumble into the void or be caught in the pull of the distant star. He hears the bellow of the ork, rage and frustration commingling. The tempo of the splinter shots leaps suddenly, before it is drowned out in the thunder of flapping wings. The scourges shriek as they swoop down about the aftermath, drawn in by the aromas of burned blood and broiled meat.

Phal pushes on and up. The central spire is ringed by another great chamber, like the laboratories below writ large. There are no cages here when he enters, only the rattle of metal in the sudden furnace-wind from below. It is a vast circular room, with a spiral staircase at its core. This winds up and away from the depravity beneath, from the circles of occupied slabs that ring it, from the swaying chains above, and their once-living cargo.

Bodies hang there, hideously altered. The flesh has been pierced and threaded in some places, intentionally crude surgeries already blooming with scars and deformations. In places they are inked, or painted – lurid patterns in some bastardised form of the aeldari tongue. Hooks pull back flesh, pinning it in place or stretching it out to invoke strange aesthetics. Phal sees no faces, only featureless grilles or iron masks wrought in imitation of tormented angels or yearning daemons.

It is a torturer’s paradise, a hell beyond mortal comprehension, but it is more than that. It is a factory of woe, and these are its cruel products. Arms ending in blades or whips, talons yearning to rend and dripping with strange toxins, this is the seed of an army.

The grotesques hang silently, but the only other figure in the room is in constant motion. The wrack moves with an addict’s relentlessness, from one slab to the other. Its hands, too many hands, are a blur as they lift and test, as they cut and slice. It leans forward, poised to amputate a limb from a prone carcass, then looks up suddenly – sniffing the air like a beast. Its head is a smooth mask of black metal, senses obscured but functional. It turns and Phal can feel its eyeless glare. When it speaks it is in a buzzing mockery of Gothic.

‘Table leaving, pit scrap, up it comes where it should not. Is this a test, master? I shall not fail if it is. Visreth shall be your faithful, yes, your faithful pet.’ It crackles with a sudden burst of noise, and it takes a moment for Phal to recognise it as a simulacrum of laughter. ‘Cut what he tells me to cut, kill what he tells me to kill, and he will raise me up! All the knowledge of the underside of the city, mine!’ It spasms, throwing up its quartet of arms. All but one holds a blade, swaying this way and that, determining where best to cut. ‘I will not be found wanting!’

Phal raises his rifle, and the thing scoffs at him. It waves its free hand dismissively, as though he could be no possible threat. Chains rattle as it moves, stalking forward between the excruciation slabs and the marionette bodies. ‘Oh, little thing, little thing,’ it croons at him. The voice is a charnel hiss, utterly corroded by years of madness and pain. ‘Oh, little thing, you cannot hope to harm me. I am master’s favourite, and he has given me all his blessings. Inside and out, his voice and his will.’

Phal fires, unloading the weapon into the wrack. Neurotoxin crystals gouge bare flesh, but it barely reacts. This is a caress to it, the embrace of an old lover. Phal feels the smile that its featureless helm does not divulge. The crackle of its laughter comes again as it raises its bladed fingers, almost gracefully. It clicks them.

And that is when the monsters spasm upon their hooks in impossible ecstasy, and plunge into the fray.

An iron tendril entangles one arm, and Phal feels pain saturate him. It is cleansing, to know such agony. He embraces it, leans into it. He pulls his arm back and the twisted thing comes with it. Drool and bilious fluid leaks from its grilled face alongside choking, sobbing noises. It sounds desperate, like a victim. He remembers Silas and his despair and his sacrifice. The others taken before him. They never come back.

Phal grits his teeth and grabs for its throat. There are five more of its kin closing in around him. Blades scrape across his plate experimentally, seeking advantage, stabbing at gaps. He can smell the spice of their blood, the oils of their remaking, and the burning-flesh stink of pain goads. The air grows close, tight and lethal.

Syringes inject their toxic cargo, and the grotesques shrill and gurgle with narcotic strain. The wrack cajoles as his creations, his victims, lurch and spasm to obey. One swings a cleaver. It gouges into his shoulder. Despite the pain, Phal does not cry out. Pain is his to master.

He lets the rifle fall and lashes out with his knife. Stitches pop and tear in the thing’s abdomen, bursting open with the reek of a long-dead corpse. Yet it still moves, still fights, still screams its muffled agony.

Another of them lashes out with the flat of its blade, and the drug-fuelled blow sends Phal flying from their midst. He hits an instrument table and the contents topple. Heavy, metallic clatters echo around him. Not the false-glass knives of the drukhari, not scalpels or claws. The impacts are solid. Brutal. Imperial. He looks across the black gloss of the floor, surprised to see the familiar weapons. Jarod’s long hunting blades lie beside Garout’s axe. Antonius’ bolt pistol has skittered just out of reach, and Phal can see the hint of Damon’s greatsword. Proud weapons, torn from the hands of some of the finest warriors he has ever known. Anger knots his stomach. They all deserved so much better.

He looks again.

He focuses.

Weeper lies at the tips of his fingers, as though bestowed by the God-Emperor’s providence. The heavy steel of the sword glows in the low lambency of the chamber, lighting the words carved along the length: Death am I to man’s enemies.

He lunges forward and seizes it by the hilt, sweeping it up as he forces himself to his feet. His fingers find the activation rune at the Templar cross of the guard, and it crackles to brilliant, beautiful life. Phal feels complete in a way he has not since he awoke. The pain and the doubt and the ghosts bleed away, burn away, with his weapon in his hand. A weapon he has carried from the fires of crusade forge-ships into the eternal war of his oath.

The disruptor-fielded blade crackles and spits as he brings it round, so fast that the air itself blurs. It strikes the raised cleaver of the first grotesque, the one that floored him, and obliterates it. He drives his sword through the reeling creature, bisecting it in one solid stroke. There is a halting spurt of ichorous blood where the weapon has not instantly cauterised the wound, and the creature’s muffled shrieks dull to a woeful gurgle. The others close in about him, so broken as to be fearless. Pain-goads flare with caged lightning; secondary and tertiary drug-loads deploy. The air is full of the heady odour of biological exertion, of barely metabolised mega-steroids. A whip tries to coil around his chest, and he draws the sword up – severing it with contemptible ease.

He is a sword brother of the Black Templars. A watch-captain of the Deathwatch. Before him, they are little more than chaff.

‘Is this the best you have?’ Phal roars the words as he turns the chamber into a true charnel house. Limbs fly through the air, trailing blood and ash. Claws and blades fall desperately, tearing at his plate, gouging at the sigils of Chapter and vigil. He has become death itself, unflinching, unyielding, giving not a single inch of ground to the enemy. They are mindless things, little better than the spoor of the tyranid swarm. He allows himself a moment of dark mirth, black and bleak laughter forcing its way from his lips.

‘Abominations!’ he cries, and the blade rises and falls. He takes a head, even as the grotesque locks its gauntlets around his throat. It falls away, a puppet with its strings cut. He lashes out against the next, and the next. The edge of his blade tastes flesh, before he throws out his fist. Cutting. Punching. Kicking. He uses his head as a bludgeon and the foe falls back, and falls forever.

His lungs heave with the effort, his hearts pound in his chest. Before, this would have been no labour at all – but the poison in his blood is slow to ebb, and wounds weigh upon him. He looks down at the result of his assault: the rivers of toxic blood, the too-pale chem-swollen flesh. It feels righteous.

He looks up at the shocked wrack as it screams and rages. It hurls itself impotently towards him, blades flailing. They deflect from his armour; one buries itself in the plate but cannot reach his flesh. He glares at it, too close to escape now, and it is a simple thing to raise his blade and let it impale itself in its frenzy. Phal can feel every moment of resistance as the sword pierces flesh, bone and armour. A trail of rotting blood trickles from the gaps around the helm’s base. The creature shudders, gasps its last and collapses. He steps over it without a second look, and begins to ascend.

The climb is disorienting by design. Each new level of the spire is lavishly appointed and garishly lit, a succession of sensory overloads. A dozen competing light sources on one level illuminate a poised figure of cut black glass, impossibly realistic. At the next, there is a glass case in which a vivisected q’orl twitches in impossibly preserved life. Erastikhus wishes to show off, to make himself seem a cultured being, at least according to whatever gutter doggerel passes for their culture.

Alongside each grisly trophy or display, Phal’s brothers wait, and watch. They wear their wounds plainly, proudly. So close to where they were meted out, there is no more need for shadows and pretence. He no longer hears their whispered words, only feels their hate, their rage, their pain.

The pitiless climb ends as he comes to the head of the vast winding stairway. He feels as though he has walked for epochs, the climb almost more wearying than the battle that has brought him to it. He feels the fire within him ebb and wax. There is pain now, deep and constant. There is internal bleeding that his clotting struggles to contain; he can feel it, hot and pulsing somewhere in his chest.

The doors to the sanctuary are ornate, deep black stone that light deigns not to touch. At either side of it sit more indulgences: jewelled eggs nestled in shimmering piles, and an ornate bladed glaive hanging in a suspensor field. He scowls as he passes them and throws open the doors.

The chamber is bright, too bright, but the light is wrong. It is a bruised luminosity, tainted, tortured. It takes Phal a moment to recognise it for what it is. It is the light of the Great Rift, cutting across the room as it cuts across the very stars. A figure stands, silhouetted before the ruptured horror of the Eye of Terror itself. The Rift picks out the brandings and inked marks that adorn the exposed musculature of its back. It turns, holding its arms out, flaunting its flayed horror.

The armature of the skin-loom clicks above, descending with spidery grace as it begins to spool and weave. Needles dance against each other, and the biological gruel shapes itself into skin. It is drawn down over the being, sliding up and behind it as the needles begin to cinch it tight. The thing draws a hissed breath between too-sharp teeth, tongue lapping at them expectantly. Like a serpent.

‘I had wondered when you would arrive,’ he chuckles dryly. Newly re-skinned, he seems newborn-smooth, but burdened with an ancient all-consuming hunger. Erastikhus, for he can be no other, flexes his taloned fingers, drawing them idly across the fresh canvas he has become. There is a persistent rattle as he moves – from the torturer’s tools that hang from his belt, and the jewels that dangle from gilded chains. These dance with inner light, made frantic by the flickering hellish projection that fills the chamber. ‘The dathedian plays out its course across the galaxy – a fierce storm, to be certain. I thought it would make you feel at home. To stand within the wound in your rotting empire.’ Consumptive laughter bubbles up from within him, rancid mockery. ‘You should appreciate such comfort, all alone, with your brothers dead.’

‘Deaths for which you will be repaid in full. A hundred of them would not be enough for you.’

‘Spare me.’ The words sigh from him. ‘Death is not for the likes of us. I am its master, and you its slave. Strong, yes? So very strong that you survived the taking of your gift. That which killed your brothers…’ He trails off. ‘Some of them. Others, I savoured.’ Phal trembles with barely contained anger, and Erastikhus lets his eyes drift to his shaking hands and blade. ‘Does it wound you, to know?’

‘My wounds no longer concern me, xenos. I have come through the fire. I have climbed through the hell of your making. No brothers, no legacy, and no hope. Only will. Only the dream of this moment.’

‘Such things ought to be savoured,’ he purrs lasciviously. ‘I too have dreamed – of my return in glory to Commorragh. As you are an orphan, so I am an exile.’ He gestures to one side, to the low stasis cage and the fleshy prizes that float within. ‘These have worth to you, yes? Your primitive bio-alchymist, he tried so very hard to reclaim them, before I liberated him from his skin.’

Phal stares transfixed at the lumpen flesh in its flickering prison of trapped time. The gene-seed. Stolen. Perverted. He watches the haemonculus’ hand caress the cage avariciously. ‘What secrets do they hold? Hmm? Others of my kind covet them, would wring out their wisdom. They would deny it to Erastikhus!’ He glares at Phal, bearing his teeth in a reptile’s snarl. ‘I shall not be denied. I shall have your secrets, bit by bloody bit, upon the slab.’

Phal has heard enough. His fingers close tight about the hilt of his sword, and he lunges forward. He hears battle cries at his back, the harsh bark of Fenrisian, and Jarod’s frantic hunt-cant. Antonius recites his apothecarion oaths, to serve his brothers and smite the foe. Damon bellows, a raw howl of near-daemonic rage. They are the strength in his arm as he swings.

And misses. The air is empty, split by the burning afterglow of his sword stroke. The haemonculus has moved, faster than thought, faster than his twisted frame should allow. He hisses as he grabs a whip from his belt and swings for Phal. Phal feels pain as he throws up his arm, caught in the coils of it. It writhes like a living thing, milking the agony from his muscles even through the armour. His plate recoils, squealing with the whine of servos. He forces Weeper up and through the whip, its tip slicing across Erastikhus’ chin and flawless cheek.

The thing draws back, eyes wide with pain – though not in fear of it, but ecstatic for it. His tongue laps at the wound, tasting the burned blood as an epicurean samples wine. ‘Delectable,’ he coos. ‘It has been some time since I was gifted pain. Allow me to return the favour.’ He throws out his hand and a shower of razor shards deploy, lancing through Phal’s helm. He feels a lens break, glass and metal puncturing his eye. His vision fails on one side – a pulse of blood and venom, before darkness.

He staggers like a drunkard, and his swing goes wide. He feels claws rake his side, tearing at the plate. Sweat and blood streak the breadth of his chest. Breathing is pain, the lancing of a million knives. He falls to his knees.

‘Weak,’ Erastikhus whispers, gloating. ‘Just as they were.’ Phal looks up at the leering figure, arms spread in triumph. The flickering light makes Erastikhus into something from a fever dream, poised to vibrate free from this reality into some transcendence.

His brothers stand behind the monster.

They no longer shout or cajole. They do not condemn, or hate. One by one, they merely nod. Approval, perhaps. Vindication? Forgiveness? His sword arm is heavy. He is so very tired.

He should have died with them, but that would have been an undeserved mercy. To live is to suffer. To struggle.

Erastikhus draws a pistol from his belt, turns it admiringly, before kneeling down. Face to face, Phal can smell the stink of his breath, the churning rot beneath the pristine surface. His teeth are a predatory gleam, carved with intricate runic patterns. Phal is close enough to see the bony growths that have already torn through the fresh skin along his shoulders. Everything about this being screams that he should not be, that he has gone on too long. Erastikhus has seen and done things that mortal men know only in nightmares, and been forever changed.

‘I had hoped to spare you the cruelty of the stinger. I would have made such art of you, little captain.’ He almost seems sincere. Phal closes his eyes, lets his hand tighten on the handle of his sword.

The blade stops shaking.

Erastikhus barely has time to look down before Phal’s sword hews an arm from him. The monster reels back. Phal follows. The blade hacks and slices. It tears strips of skin from the foul xenos, and sends great fans of leathern robes flying. Phal screams his rage with every concession made, every backward step the enemy takes. Erastikhus ducks low, and the sword buries itself in the wall above his head. He grabs the stasis cage as he sprints for a control panel, hands a blur of desperate action.

The wall changes, alters suddenly to the haemonculus’ will. Psycho-plastic reshapes, or perhaps only now becomes visible. There is a doorway there, a hole in the world. Reality shifts and crackles in the aperture, dancing to an ancient tune. There are muttered curses and prayers on Erastikhus’ bleeding lips as he moves towards it, turning one last time to mock before–

Before Phal hits him with his full weight and sends them both spiralling beyond eternity.

The light is diffuse, strange, likely the product of a cold and distant star. Dust and snow drift from the grey sky as Erastikhus coughs and sputters, attempting to gain his bearings. Something has broken inside of him, black blood leaking from his lips. He crawls along the ground, mewling piteously, reaching for his prize with his remaining arm. The cage is almost within his grasp when the heavy metal boot crushes his spine. Bony spurs break, and he hisses through clenched teeth.

‘Justice,’ Phal intones. The warrior does not waste further breath. He brings the sword down and cleaves the monster’s head from his shoulders before he can speak, or beg. He reverses the blade and drives it through the chest, then leans heavily upon the blade.

‘Justice,’ voices whisper as one.

He looks up. His brothers are gathered in the twilight. Watching. Their armour and forms are pure. Whole. Phal pushes himself up unsteadily, reaches for the stasis cage. When he looks back they are gone, lost in the grey drift of ashen dust. Like a memory, or a dream.

Like ghosts.

The world is barren, a poor cradle for life – but life will have found roots here. He appraises the place critically. There is no infrastructure he can see, no signs of any habitation, let alone human. The Imperium might never find him. He might die here, alone and unremembered. The annals of the Deathwatch may record him as lost, like the rest of the team. He could fight this world and all its denizens for a decade, a century, and word would never reach the Imperium he serves, or the Chapter he left.

What matters to Atticus Phal is that he still fights. That he serves.

‘My unending vigil endures.’

THE NIHILUS EDGE

Justin D. Hill

Mankind was ignorant.

The depths of its incapacity was limitless. Night pressed in and across the Imperium billions of souls were obsessed with inconsequential trifles such as love, wealth, power or freedom – while the future of their planets, the future of humanity itself, depended on a few thousand warriors in black.

Veterans among the veteran. The elite order of Adeptus Astartes, known as the Deathwatch.

Mankind was blissfully ignorant.

It was a mercy, thought Jotunn, the Lone Wolf, watch-master of the Deathwatch fortress of Picket’s Watch, as he kept a tireless vigil on the starless void of what had once been the Eastern Fringe, but what was now the very edge of the Imperium Nihilus – the border between the Imperium and the interstellar darkness.

It was into the darkness that the albino Space Wolf directed his ceaseless gaze. It was from this blackness that new threats might arise.

His hunched form, black in his artificer-wrought Tactical Dreadnought armour, stared down into the cracked and burned knucklebones, and within their blackened lines he scried a dreadful threat to the bastion he had occupied for time out of mind.

One that even its battle-brothers and helots would be unaware of. But one on which the very future of the Imperium Nihilus might rest.

I

The artificer, Amit Beghum, died first. He had come to us fifty years before with Jarald, of the Black Templars Chapter, who had been lost in the destruction of the space hulk Spine of Thanatos.

Amit was a barge-brat, one of a long chain of serfs who served the Chapter of the Black Templars. He learnt his trade with them. I liked to sit with him as he bent over his workbench. His mechadendrites coiled over his shoulder, his monocle head lamp illuminating whatever he was working on.

Amit had worked with power armour coming from a hundred Chapters. He knew each of their peculiarities, and could tailor replacements that fitted seamlessly into the suits worn by the brothers of the Deathwatch station Picket’s Watch.

His chamber was set deep in the bowels of Picket’s Watch. Each suit of armour was an ancient relic, maintained meticulously by the Techmarines of the great Deathwatch bastion of Talassa Prime. Our last Techmarines had been summoned back to Talassa Prime just before the Great Calamity. The scheduled replacement never arrived. But we maintained a small staff of artificers, and chief among them was Amit.

He was a master among humans. When I picture him, I do not see his mangled corpse but him shaking his head in wonder, gazing up at the ancient suits of black power armour, tears in his eyes. They were far beyond anything he could fashion. They were far beyond anything the Imperium could fashion now. They purred with energy and threat. Sleek, smooth, inlaid with traceries of gold and ceramite – they were sublime.

Amit was not a garrulous man. He sifted out his words as if they were coins. ‘The work is unmatched,’ he said as he put his hand to the ceramite armour. The size of the armour seemed to magnify its craftsmanship. He had no understanding of how right he was when he took in a deep sigh and said, ‘We’ve lost too much.’

The night before his death, Amit had been working on a vambrace that Skratan of the White Templars had worn. There was a tracery of thorns along the arm that curled down each finger.

‘Look!’ Amit said triumphantly. ‘Adaptation. Not original. Work of a master.’

It was important to Amit. He showed me, and then he laid the vambrace down on his workbench, and his mechadendrites started to gather the tools he needed, placing them in size order before him.

He adjusted the lighting, and we stood, admiring the beauty of that vambrace, when distant music began to sound. In the chapel, the servo-choir had broken into psalms. The music drifted down through the pipework, even this deep within the fortress. It was a paean to those who fought the xenos.

But it meant that I was late for my service at the hypno-indoctrination chamber. ‘I’d better go,’ I said.

Amit barely heard me. He was already taking up his tools. His monocle light stabbed down, a beam of blue-white.

When Watch-Master Jotunn questioned me I blurted out the truth.

‘I was the last person to see him alive. One of the first people to see his corpse. But I did not kill him.’

The brutal manner of Amit’s murder shocked us all.

He had been ripped apart. It was as if a wild animal had broken into his chambers and attacked him in a savage fury. One of his arms had been dislocated from its shoulder and thrown across the room. His mechadendrites had been torn from their flesh sockets. A leg had been severed above the knee, his neck twisted from his head, his augmetics stripped from his spine, and his ribcage ripped open like the leaves of a book, exposing the organs within.

It was as if he had been offered as a sacrifice. Kidney. Liver. Lungs. But his heart was missing. I had a horrible feeling that it had been devoured by whatever had killed him.

We were all stunned. Death was no stranger to Picket’s Watch, but danger always came from outside. Never from within.

I could see Wretched’s mouth moving silently, as if he was looking for the right words. ‘Dead,’ he said at last, and turned to me.

I nodded slowly. ‘Murdered.’

Wretched repeated the word with a voice full of emotion. He reached out for me. ‘Why would the Emperor let this happen?’

I had no answers for him and gave none. I left him there, staring in horror at the blood.

Wretched was simple. An abhuman, but permitted.

He kept his own devotional shrine, decorated with scraps of armour, spent bolt shells, rat bones, human bones. Any bones he could find.

The room had a foetid air. He spent hours each day there, tending his relics and kneeling in prayer, the latter usually a monologue of despair and self-loathing.

He hated his form – his size, his mass, his terrible strength, his slow thinking. He wanted, more than anything, to be human.

The morning of the murder, he had just come from his early ablutions. He spoke the truth when he looked at Amit’s body and touched his dirty charms and shook his heavy jowls.

He said what we were all thinking. ‘The killer must have come with the purple man.’

II

I should introduce myself.

I was born in the deep mine galleries of Hive Siklopeia, on the planet of Hypogeum – though I knew nothing of earth or rain or wind or sky, rain or rivers, planets or hives.

My mother named me Taierna, an aspirational name that you would give a mine-master’s daughter. It was a name I hated. It did not fit me or my world. But it spoke of her ambitions for me. She was a low-hive whore – not a thing of shame, just a fact. We knew nothing of shame like we knew nothing of daylight.

I was born in the lowest strata, right down there with the abhumans, mutants and criminals – feral creatures competing with the rodents for sustenance.

When I was seventeen, slave-gangs purged our strata of filth like me. These cleansings happened every generation or so, and it was my luck it happened when I was still young.

We fought but were violently subdued and held in cages like animals. One by one each cage was emptied. Wardens with grilled masks and flak armour dragged us out.

With one head, two arms, two legs, ten fingers and ten toes – in the world I had been raised I had always been one of a minority. I did not know then there was a line between human and abhuman. But now I found I was classified as ‘normal’, biologically speaking. The other categories were ‘tolerated abhuman’ and ‘non-tolerated abhuman’. Most of those I had grown up with were in the latter category.

I heard the wardens as they put them all out of their misery. It was like butchers working through a herd of grox. There were grunts and curses, screams and the sound of banging – all ending with the dull, wet thud of a boltgun to the skull.

Of course, I didn’t care about that then. I was sure they were going to kill me too. I fought like a rat, and they beat me near senseless.

When I came to, I lay among my own filth in a metal container. Vomit added to the stench of waste. It was cold. Our breath frosted out of our mouths. I had never seen such a thing. I was sure it was witchcraft.

‘Still,’ one of the others told me, a man with long rat-tails of filthy hair hanging about his face.

‘What is happening?’

He paused to listen. ‘We have left Hypogeum behind. We are being taken to the slave-markets.’

‘What is Hypogeum?’

He gave me a pitiful look. ‘That is the planet upon which you were born.’

So I learned the name of my home world, which I would never see again.

In the slave-market I was bought by a man with a bullseye lumen clenched in his fist. ‘Come, thrall!’ he ordered, the voice deep, resonant, commanding. I was not afraid of him, even when he told me, ‘You belong to me now.’

The speaker was a strange-looking man with dark skin and metal wires plugged into his skull. I fought him of course, because that is my spirit.

He was brutal, but not unkind. And it was he who named me. When he had me tamed, he said, ‘What is your name, thrall?’

‘I do not have one,’ I spat.

He held my chin in his fist and spoke almost kindly: ‘Then I shall call you Nightside.’

I did not know it then, but he was a thrall-master for the Black Consuls Chapter.

The Chapter were on one of their crusades. It was through luck and the Emperor’s generosity that I had been lifted from the filth of my world to the sanitised order of theirs – the battle-barge that I learnt later was named the Keleriter. It was sombre, clean, deserted and had an air of silent and thoughtful watchfulness.

Through fortune, chance and the benevolence of the Emperor, I, Nightside, went from hive-scum to Chapter-serf for the Black Consuls Chapter.

I was one of the lucky ones.

III

The murder of Amit Beghum happened twenty years after the fall of Cadia.

That is the date from which we all now reckon time. It was so cataclysmic, so indelibly stamped into all of our pasts. Men, women, children, abhumans. Cities. Hives. Planets. All of them were consumed. The loss of the fortress world set off a psychic howl of countless souls that rolled across the Imperium. That howl shattered every window in Picket’s Watch.

Even I – a dull-brain – could feel the psychic tsunami. Our astropaths were the finest of their craft, ever watchful for hint of warning, danger or the immaterial spike of a xenos attack. They could detect the slightest psychic whisper.

The psychogenic surge blew their minds.

In the serried carved cells of the choir, each astropath leapt up as if electrocuted. Sparks flew from their bodies. With arms thrown out, heads strained back, they stood transfixed with agony as blood poured from their eyes and noses and ears.

Then, as one, they slumped, strings cut.

Of those left to us, most had to be culled. That was brutal work carried out by Battle-Brothers Akuchi and Carn: sublime warriors in black, one pauldron still bearing their respective Chapter colours, Adulators for Akuchi, the Dark Angels for Carn. The genhanced giants burst into the astropathic choir chamber, gold-traced boltguns in their massive fists.

They struck terror into our very souls.

We were fearful of Carn at the best of times. His hooded face was pale and ghostly as he paced along in the shadows. But Akuchi was of the Adulators, who respect learning and mysticism above all. We did not fear him. He spent much of his time meditating, his eyes closed, slow breath misting before him.

But we had all seen how he could wake in an instant, his almond eyes alert as a wolf’s. He was all wolf that day. We saw him enter the astropathic chamber. We heard the rounds ricochet from the stone-worked walls, knew the room was filled with fire and steel. The danger was crushed within seconds, like a conflagration on board a void craft when the airlocks are vented.

None who were on duty that day made it out of the room alive. If in doubt, destroy.

The handful of astropaths left to us were avoided after that. Fearful and timid creatures that they were anyway, now even more they kept to themselves. The warders stood guard on the astropathic chamber. We never went in and the astropaths never came out, except for Baynk, his blind hand feeling its way around the intersections.

Baynk was a thin, lonely soul who seemed to crave the more normal life we lived, away from the tight confines of the astropathic quarters.

‘Greetings, Nightside,’ he said. ‘What news?’

‘I should ask you,’ I said to him, and he laughed. Of course there was nothing he could tell me.

As this psychic tidal wave settled, the light of the Astronomican did not splutter or fade. It died.

We were the most easterly bastion in the Imperium of Man, but even there, we had always bathed in the light of the Astronomican. It had always been a beacon that our Navigators could see.

The sudden darkness was chilling. We had no idea what had befallen the million worlds. We did not speculate. What is knowledge compared to faith? It is a shiny bauble that entrances the foolish. Faith is the inner light that keeps the believer from straying.

But the shock left our bastion critically weakened. And as Jotunn warned us all, weakness would bring the xenos from their holes, like rats to feed on the corpse of the Imperium.

IV

The second human thrall to be murdered was Elena Strut.

She was a thin, pickled old hag, with long pinching fingers. In a thick accent, she proudly declared herself from Segmentum Solar. I saw her just hours before she was killed, just hours after Amit’s death.

She was Picket’s Watch’s Master of Tomes and had a cell in the entrance to the scriptorium. I knew her well. Lockdown meant long hours confined within our cells and I liked to have something to read to pass the hours.

Ever since I had learnt to read, I had found the company of a book made enforced solitude more bearable. I had become a keen student of a little-known military campaign that had been waged three hundred years earlier, led by a short-lived warmaster named Slaydo. It was a minor event in the scheme of things, but I found it satisfying for a matter of study, not least because many of the sources were contradictory, and these puzzles intrigued me.

Elena found the book for me. It was bound in black leather. The spine was plain, but the front had been embossed with golden letters. It was hundreds of years old. The gold leaf had worn away and the pages had been heavily thumbed.

‘Nightside,’ she said, licking her finger as she held it in the light of her green desk lamp. ‘This is the one. I should not let you take it from here.’

I was desperate for it. I felt hungry for it.

I smiled. ‘You trust me,’ I said.

She gave me an intense look, slightly sideways, as an eagle looks at its prey. ‘Since Amit’s death, how do we trust anyone?’

Those words came back to me when I found her nailed to the wall, her ribs sliced open, her organs exposed and her heart missing.

Watch-Master Jotunn listened as I told him everything I knew. His eyes were shards of ice. His body, clad in slab-thick Tactical Dreadnought armour, filled the space before me like a black wall, the white braids of his beard as thick as my arm. His sharp teeth glinted.

‘Where were you when this happened?’ he demanded, as he bent over me.

I was shaking so hard I could barely speak. But I told him the truth.

His force of will would crush it out of me.

V

I was with the Black Consuls Chapter for three years before I saw my first Adeptus Astartes.

It was a glimpse from a balcony. Everything about them was oversized. They were monstrous – human flesh and blood remoulded and reformed as weapons of war.

I was chilled by utter fear.

In their own way the members of the Adeptus Astartes were as abhuman as the wretches I had grown up with, the poor souls who had been slaughtered for their genetic taint. If only those creatures had been given the opportunity to die in the service of the Emperor. From what I have seen of the galaxy, the lives of the Adeptus Astartes also end in slaughter.

I was a keen learner.

I worked in the armoury. After decades of service I finally rose from thrall’s abetor to apprentice armourer, and finally to fourth helot to Brother Leonas.

Brother Leonas left two years later to take up the Long Vigil. We went with him, packed up as part of his baggage. Now we no longer belonged to the Black Consuls. We were the property of the chamber militant of the Ordo Xenos. The Deathwatch.

So we ended at the bastion of Picket’s Watch, a void-fortress that had been built for the Adeptus Astartes, with corridors twenty feet wide, fifty feet high. It was a daughter fortress of Talassa Prime, on the dark Eastern Fringe – a lonely watch-post on the edge, where the galaxy faded into darkness.

The histories of the place were books written by and for Adeptus Astartes, so large that I had to ask Wretched to help me. He loved the marginalia and illustrated capitals, which showed a high white palace, jagged mountains, great ships bearing the emblem of the Imperial Fists, the ranks of yellow-clad warriors: the glories of ancient days.

The place had been built and founded by the Imperial Fists in the years before memory. In the mouldering stonework their symbol still remained. Why the Imperial Fists needed such a mighty guard tower to watch the interstellar darkness, I do not know. The histories never went so far back as the birth of the Imperium.

When their watch failed, ours began, but in honour of their history there was always an Imperial Fist among the kill-team posted at Picket’s Watch. And at the time of Amit’s killings, it was Brother Anneas who represented his Chapter here.

I served Leonas for a hundred years.

I cleaned his armour and weapons with diligence. I lived with his other thralls, and I argued and fought with them. I knew him. His moods. His manners. How he prepared for battle. We were no more to him than motes of dust that hung in the air of his chamber.

I was with him for over a decade before I asked him if he knew my name.

‘No.’ Nothing more.

It was a hundred and seventy-nine days later that he finally asked. He was wounded and I had removed the armour plates on his right side. Xenos acid had eaten a hole through them. His skin had gone as well, and there was a gaping hole in the black carapace beneath. The hissing yellow excreta had dissolved a fist-sized cavity through the fused rib-bone.

I could see the lungs within, pale and veined red, and the wheezing hole within them as the air he breathed came out of the wound.

I had seen such things before, but only in the dying.

‘Lord,’ I stammered. ‘Are-are-are you in pain?’

He sat up slowly. ‘What is pain?’ he said, his voice a deep rumble like an earth tremor. ‘The Apothecary says I will live to fight again.’

It was true. I could see his wound was already starting to heal, the colour returning to his face. He sat up and stretched. ‘What did your mother call you?’

I could not lie to him. ‘Taierna.’

He frowned. ‘That is not what the others name you.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘My name is Nightside.’

After he believed the rest of his Chapter destroyed, Leonas named himself ‘Last’. If Leonas was indeed the last, then the Chapter known as the Black Consuls are no more. His life was used up, as black candles in the chapel are. His gene-seed was sent to the watch-fortress of Talassa Prime. His body was recovered and wrapped in a black shroud.

I was given the honour of holding one of the brass censers as his battle-brothers carried his remains down to tombs beneath the keep. One of them could have lifted him with ease, but there was ritual to this. Four of them bore his bier down to the catacombs.

The tunnels were unlit. They did not need light, and nor did I. I think they liked that about me. But the tunnels had been built for Astartes; they yawned higher and wider than I needed. I stood mouthing the prayers as the kill-team left us behind, and went inside.

My final view of my master was the shrouded shadow, borne into the niche where he would lie.

His service was over. Mine, however, was not.

VI

‘There was no pleasure,’ Akuchi of the Adulators told me much later, just before I locked him into his hypno-indoctrination chair. I had not asked, but he had seen the fear in me. ‘We did what had to be done. Those who were weak could serve us no longer.’

He was talking of the regime of terror that went on within Picket’s Watch in the days after the fall of Cadia.

Insanity spread like a plague through the human serfs. The five brothers of the Deathwatch, resplendent in their magnificent suits of artificer power armour, bolters in mighty fists, culled the insane.

I bowed. But my memories of that time were dark.

Thralls and artificers and armourers and tech-priests – we had all been driven to the point of breaking. Many of us spilt over into derangement. I teetered on the brink, and, thank the Golden Throne, fell back onto the side of sanity.

But when it was over, half of our number had been culled. We wiped the walls and stones clean of blood, gathered the bodies, wrapped them in white shrouds and loaded them into the Lesser Void Gate.

There was a great pile of them. The other thralls asked me to say some words. I made a brief speech and a prayer, and then we opened the gates and sent them out into the void. I remember standing by the gothic armourglass windows and watching their white shapes spiral out into the void, scattering in their shame.

I felt cleansed. Even the lowliest thrall considered themselves highly. We were part of the Deathwatch and we were all sworn to defend humanity against the xenos. The dead had been tested and they had been found weak. Our number might be lessened, we told ourselves, but they were like impurities in a blade of sharpened steel. They had been beaten out of us.

There were fewer of us now, but we were stronger without them.

We lost seven more astropaths in the first year after the fall of Cadia. A mix of insanity, exhaustion and a void contagion left them echoing shells, drooling out the rest of their lives like primitive life forms, without motive, thought or ability.

From the great bastion of Talassa Prime, our mother watch-fortress, we heard nothing. No word, no supplies, no reinforcements. Silence.

It was as if the Imperium of Man had ceased to be. All that our remaining astropaths could hear were etheric echoes of that deafening scream, incoherent scraps, shouted names, bellicose demands for aid, code numbers, time-reference stamps, the desperate staccato tunes of binharic cant. None of them made sense, incoherent fragments scattered to the Eastern Fringes like debris from an exploding planet.

But we took each one, diligently studied it, tried to make sense of it all. It was like piecing together the mosaics of the greatest cathedrals from a mere handful of tesserae. They barely gave us an impression. All efforts at probing the darkness were foiled. Even just an acknowledgement that we – or they – existed went unanswered.

To all effects we – the ultimate guardians of black-space – had become deaf and dumb and mute, tormented by the sibilant whispers of the empyrean and the faint echoes of what we were supposed to protect. We clung on, a lone bastion on the Eastern Fringes, filtering the darkness for messages.

And all that changed on the five thousand, six hundred and fifty-seventh day of the silence, when a ship arrived in-system and sent out a message wrapped deep in codes. The message came with Inquisitorial cyphers.

I knew that something had happened. I could feel the change within the fortress. It was as if the very stones knew that our exile was over.

Word took hours to reach me. I was just a thrall. But whispers came saying that an inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos had arrived. No doubt, we thought, all would be explained.

VII

‘The killer must have come with the purple man,’ Wretched said as he tugged nervously at his necklace of charred knucklebones.

The ‘purple man’ was Inquisitor Ayo Hideo. His sleek black Inquisitorial cruiser had come to Picket’s Watch seventy-five hours before Amit was killed.

Since the fall of Cadia, we had spent years in darkness and confusion. We – the human serfs – greeted the inquisitor’s arrival with elation. Even the brothers of the Deathwatch seemed to relax a little.

There were just five battle-brothers on Picket’s Watch when the ‘purple man’ came. Of course, there was the Imperial Fist, Anneas. He had lost half of his face in a battle against the Devourer. It had been replaced with contoured steel shaped like a skull; it always appeared to me as if the skull were trying to break out from the skin, as a stone in the desert is exposed by the wind.

There was also Carn of the Dark Angels, Akuchi of the Adulators and Skratan of the White Templars, whose cheek was inked with the same emblem that covered his right pauldrons: the plain black cross of the White Templars.

The master of the fortress was the one battle-brother who we saw only rarely: Watch-Master Jotunn, ‘the Lone Wolf’. He lived in the deepest pits of Picket’s Watch, in the chambers beneath the dungeons. The first time I saw him he was a looming shape in artificer Tactical Dreadnought armour, black as midnight, traced throughout with goldwork filigree. His white beard hung in plaits to his knees. When he turned to stare at me I forgot to breathe.

It was not his massive face, long fangs or plaited old beard. It was the shock. He was as pale as I was. White hair, marble skin, pink eyes blinking in the darkness.

He was, like me, an albino.

‘Who are you?’

‘Nightside,’ I bleated.

He nodded, and turned away.

‘Nightside,’ he said to himself, his voice poignant with meaning.

VIII

Until the events recorded here, I don’t think I saw the Lone Wolf more than once or twice after that.

I lived my quiet life, performing my duties to the level I had been instructed. Like many others whose battle-brother had been killed, we lived on, looking for meaning.

One of my responsibilities was to man the hypno-indoctrination cell. This was where the brothers came to understand the horrors of the xenos. There were a dozen of these cells, each one identical to the other: a beehive domed chamber, with a brass throne set into the floor and servitor occupying a niche in the wall. Only one of these chambers was still used.

The five brothers here had been through the processes hundreds of times, until it was more than mere knowledge. It came unbidden. Only Akuchi the Adulator insisted on daily indoctrination.

Each morning I rose, finished my morning ablutions, then went straight to wake the machine-spirit. The brass throne would hum with expectation, a cold note that put a chill down my spine.

Akuchi came dressed in a plain white robe. It was a holy ritual for him. He sat and closed his eyes, and took in a deep breath. I bowed. There was no need for speech. This was a ritual that had been going on for decades.

I fastened the clamps about Akuchi’s arms and waist and legs; these were not strictly necessary, but it was for our – the thralls’ – protection. As I worked, it was hard not to be overwhelmed by the size and power of the Adeptus Astartes. Lastly, I lowered the skull net over Akuchi’s head.

I always stepped back. ‘I will start now,’ I always warned him. These were the only words that passed between us, though it was as much for my benefit as his.

I pulled the lever down with both hands. Light crackled about his head. His limbs stiffened. The reinforced locks creaked as he strained against them. His mouth opened in a wide rictus, a silent scream that went on for hours.

Of course a human could not understand the hypno-indoctrination, but Leonas once tried to explain it to me. ‘They teach us of every xenos race that has ever been executed by the Deathwatch in our thousands of years of history. We learn from hypno-indoctrination. The helmet readings from ten thousand combats show us how to kill. And they show us how the xenos kills in turn. Information gleaned from the glorious ends of countless brothers.’

‘So you spend three hours being killed?’

Leonas gave one of his smiles, a tight, humourless grimace that did not reach as far as his eyes. ‘Yes.’

His manner showed that I should ask no more. But even for Adeptus Astartes this was an ordeal. Leonas lived with the death of his own Chapter, and the weight of tens of thousands of other Space Marines on top of that brought many of his psychic wounds to the fore.

The garrison occupied a tiny fraction of the fortress. Whole wings were left closed, dark and deserted. We camped out in the corners of these vast rooms, watching the years pass by, dutifully fulfilling our functions.

As chosen adepts we rarely had enough to do. Excessive care was lavished on us. I went through my fourth cycle of rejuvenat about a month before ‘the purple man’ came.

I remember waking from the treatment, my body all scars and painful swelling as my distended glands struggled to absorb the youth that had been forced into them. The first time I went through rejuvenat I lay in bed for a week, followed by another week when I bounced off the walls like a kitten. But each time afterwards, though the pain was the same, the effect was rapidly diminishing. Perhaps this, I thought, would be my last extension.

As I mulled on this, a shadow fell over me. It stank of rotting teeth, sweat and unwashed hair. I knew it at once. There was no mistaking the heavy stubbled jowls and the deep-set eyes.

‘You live,’ Wretched breathed. His hulking body filled my vision.

He put one enormous, rough hand to my head. ‘You are warm,’ he said.

He lifted me and carried me in his arms like a man might carry his babe, down the long flights of spiral staircases to the chambers which we occupied. I was too sick to resist. ‘Hush!’ he soothed. ‘Still.’

We passed his shrine. I could smell old pots of unguents, a dead rat, the mouldering skull that he had dried and imperfectly mummified. He carried me inside and laid me in a crude cot, and with clumsy fingers struggled to lift the blankets over me. ‘I get food,’ he whispered, and the charms about his neck jingled as he leant over me.

On the third day, when I woke, I opened my eyes and saw not Wretched but a man with a naked torso, stimm-plugs and extended forehead.

It was Lavelle. He was sweating, of course.

I quickly pushed myself up. I was always cautious around Lavelle. He shoved off the wall and took a step inside, casting Wretched’s shrine a disgusted look. His rasping voice was like a blade being sharpened. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you survived?’

‘I did.’

‘Have you heard?’

I nodded.

‘We’re to receive visitors.’

He pushed himself forward. I was intensely aware of my weakness. I never liked to be in a room with Lavelle. Alone or otherwise.

He looked down on me, his breathing laboured. ‘They’re bringing a wounded Astartes. He’ll be needing serfs.’ He paused. He was not a complex man and I could read him like a book.

‘Think you will be among them?’

Lavelle blinked. His nostrils flared. ‘Why not? Who else? You?’

I shook my head. I did not want to antagonise him. Lavelle was the last of three warriors brought here years before by a member of the Iron Hands Chapter. He was from a planet named Lostock and had served in its armies. ‘We were selected for enhancement,’ he had told us. He had the scars to prove it. He was faster, tougher, more deadly. They were categorised as Gland War veterans.

Lavelle thought himself a lesser form of Adeptus Astartes. But the drug-glands weakened his kind’s grip on lucidity. They always appeared to be holding a dam back. The other two had both lost their battle – docile pets turned suddenly rabid.

The first one had turned in the dining hall. He let out a sudden howl as his knife went through the throat of a helot named Luddel. It was like a cry of relief.

Lavelle and the other gland warrior, Benn, cut their comrade down, as if putting a beast to sleep.

When Benn turned violent he was too strong even for Lavelle. He took his brother down, and then went amok among us, spraying blood over walls and ceiling.

In the end it was the Lone Wolf who appeared. He entered the room like a black shadow, twice as big as Wretched, terrifying in his speed and stealth and power. He slaughtered Benn and stopped over the body of Lavelle, lightning claws still crackling with Benn’s blood.

Lavelle lay in a pool of his own blood. I thought Jotunn was going to kill him as well, but instead he turned to me.

‘Nightside,’ he said. ‘This one is alive. See him fixed. We should give him the opportunity to die in the Emperor’s service.’

IX

On the day the ‘purple man’ arrived, it was Lavelle who summoned me. ‘We’re wanted. Full battle gear.’

‘Are they expecting trouble?’

Lavelle laughed. As if our fighting prowess was even a shadow of that of the battle-brothers among us. ‘No. Stupid. We’re an honour guard. They’re bringing in a wounded Astartes. A Dark Angel. Carn has insisted he be brought to his chambers.’

We went out to greet the newcomers in full battle-armour. I had a suit of beautiful black carapace, rebreather helmet with smoked glass vision slit, and a power stave with a crosspiece in the shape of the Inquisitorial symbol. My breastplate was adorned with strips of parchment.

There were five others in the honour guard. Like me, all of the humans had spent hours preparing our gear for moments such as these. Every inch of armour had been lovingly polished, fashioned, painted, each band and tie carefully worked. Our guns were stripped, cleaned, polished, painted, stripped and cleaned once more. And all of our armour was painted black.

We were beyond insignificant. The focus of the moment was Anneas. He towered over us in his blackened power armour plate, the yellow pauldron glowing in the darkness – a black fist set within a white circle, flanked by green laurels.

‘Stand aside!’ he commanded the Inquisitorial ratings. He marched up the ramp to inspect the craft.

We stood, waiting. I watched the pennants on my blade stir in the draughts.

At last Anneas returned. From the shadows stalked what I took to be the inquisitor. He gave us all a cold, humourless look. But as he stepped forward, Anneas put his hand to his bolt pistol. He held out his other hand in warning. His voice was a rumble that filled the courtyard.

‘The scent of xenos hangs about you. Bring out the Dark Angel. You and the rest of your crew will not be admitted to Picket’s Watch.’

The inquisitor held out a disc of metal, and in the air above his open palm a holo-pict appeared. It showed his Inquisitorial rosette. It spun in the air. ‘In the name of the God-Emperor.’

Anneas did not relent. ‘I forbid you and your crew permission to enter this fortress. Bring out the Dark Angel. You, and the rest of your crew shall remain aboard.’

I felt him before I saw him.

There he was, standing behind us, a blacker shadow in the darkness. It was Watch-Master Jotunn – the Lone Wolf – in his heavy Tactical Dreadnought armour. His skin was pale in the darkness. The scent of burning hung about him.

He came forward, silent as a cat.

There was a long pause before the Lone Wolf spoke. He looked to Anneas and growled, ‘You have done well, Anneas. But I have consulted the augurs.’ He put a massive fist onto the other battle-brother’s shoulder. He looked down at the man in purple.

‘Inquisitor Ayo. To you and your staff, I give welcome to Picket’s Watch.’

Inquisitor Ayo had nine retainers with him, but one immediately caught my eye. She clearly specialised in the arts of interrogation. She had a cold, hungry look to her pinched cheeks – a savant, whose mouth had been replaced with a metal vox-grille and one limb with a metal stylus-arm and dataslate. There were other retainers and a couple of loyal guns, but my gaze lingered on Inquisitor Ayo.

He wore a knee-length velvet coat with a long purple robe, worn hide boots and a broad cummerbund of plaited human hair, hung with charms and silver aquilas. A silken name banner rose from behind his back. His face showed signs of early rejuvenat.

His guards pushed a grav-bier out of the lighter’s cargo hold. Wretched and I took it and carried it into the opening hall.

‘Step back!’ a voice commanded.

I turned and looked up at Carn. His bolter was drawn, and I felt his targeting lock on me within a moment. It was almost instantaneous.

‘Step back!’ he ordered again. His voice filled the room with a roar like a falling building, making the metal plates beneath our feet rumble. I was used to the Adeptus Astartes, but even I fell back stunned.

In three of his giant strides he ate up the distance between us. We cowered as if struck.

The body of the wounded Dark Angel was hidden, but the head was visible through the plex-glass of the stasis chamber. His helmet had been removed. His eyes were closed. He was ghostly white, but there was breath in him still. You could see it, condensing on the surface of the glass just above his mouth.

I do not think I had ever seen one of the Adeptus Astartes from this angle – above, like this. Not unless they were dead. I felt fear then. As if standing over him like this was a transgression.

The inquisitor stepped forward. The target bead snapped to his forehead. ‘What did you do to him?’ Carn demanded.

Inquisitor Ayo showed no fear. ‘I found him like this. On the moon of Praxor Nine. When I came there the cities were empty, the streets abandoned. There was not a soul left behind – only this warrior in the governor’s palace. And he was sorely wounded. As you can see. I have brought him here.’

Carn stepped forward. He put his hand onto the grav-bier and pulled it towards him. ‘I will take him into my care.’

X

Inquisitor Ayo and his retainers were housed in the guest wing of Terseus Tower, a lone fort on the southern side of the bastion. It was a tall pinnacle that offered privacy to members of the Inquisition that visited us, but it was also easily quarantined against the rest of the bastion. There was only one entrance – a vast reinforced gateway with interlocking teeth – and from the moment they arrived, the gate was locked and guarded.

Skratan, the White Templar, took the first vigil. For thirty-six hours he stood, seemingly immobile as a marble statue, but I knew from experience that his stillness was that of a cat, one that waits for the rat to creep past.

It was during his watch that Amit was killed.

‘It has to be the purple man,’ Wretched said.

Baynk, the astropath, disagreed. ‘Impossible,’ he rasped. ‘Nothing could get past the battle-brothers.’

‘Baynk is right,’ I said. He might be blind, but he could see things that we could not. ‘Nothing could get past Skratan.’

Suspicion fell on Lavelle, but he had been duelling in the training pits. The data-picts showed it.

So, if not Lavelle, then who?

Next morning I found Elena Strut. Her body had been nailed to the wall of the scriptorium.

I had just found her when I heard a scrape of grit behind me. I spun round.

It was Wretched. ‘She’s dead!’ he observed, and started to moan.

‘Stay away from me!’ I hissed as Wretched shuffled towards me. His face looked weary. There were heavy bags under his eyes.

‘She’s dead,’ he said, coming closer.

I raised my hand. ‘Stay away from me!’

He looked pained. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said.

We were all scared after that.

Another helot was found dead that same day. He had suffered the same fate. Murder. Bisection, his heart missing. He was one of the kitchen lads, descended from a family that had lived in the bowels of Picket’s Watch for as long as anyone could remember.

I found a dark place in the corridors leading to Terseus Tower. And there I sat and watched and waited.

For hours there was nothing. Just the creak of the bastion. The hum of the gravity generators. The distant choirs erupting into plaintive song. And occasionally, the repetitive dull thud-thud of one of the Adeptus Astartes in their training yards.

I had been there for nearly three hours when I saw Lavelle hurrying towards the tower. Ten minutes later he came back the same way. He kept looking over his shoulder.

A few minutes after that another shadow stretched down the corridor. I knew the way the figure was walking. It was Baynk the astropath, one hand brushing along the wall, guiding him along.

I pushed off from the wall and followed him. He passed the hall that led towards the astropathic choir, and continued to the undercroft.

I intended to follow him but instead I ran into Wretched. His beads and bones rattled as he loomed over me, breathing heavily. ‘He has died,’ he said.

I did not know who he was speaking of.

‘The battle-brother,’ he moaned. ‘The Dark Angel is dead.’

That evening at dinner, a sombre mood permeated the whole fortress. The murders weighed like stones upon our shoulders. But there was another sadness. A sixth battle-brother would have been a great addition to our number, and those like Lavelle who had hoped to find service were left disappointed.

The loss of a human was petty compared to the loss of a member of the Adeptus Astartes. They had their own death rituals. We were not privy to them. We were just serfs. I felt powerless, and had an idea that I could help to find the murderer.

I had always been a creature of darkness and so I donned my carapace and stalked the corridors. I went to the guest tower, but the gates were closed and there was the dark shape of Anneas, his yellow pauldron glowing in the darkness.

He did not turn towards me but called out, ‘Nightside! Stay away. You have duties to perform.’

I did. Of course. I fell back into the shadows, admonished. It was nearly time for Akuchi’s training session.

I strapped Akuchi in and started the indoctrination. When the three hours were up, his silent scream ended as his mouth slammed shut and his eyes snapped open. In that moment, the look he gave me was one of murderous loathing. The expression alone made me take a step backwards. My breath caught in my throat. I was terrified, for within his response I saw the true horror of the xenos.

And then his control returned. It was as if a switch had been thrown. He closed his eyes again for a moment and let out a deep breath.

I unlocked his limbs and returned the instruments to their catches. ‘You are fearful,’ he said.

It was a fact. I don’t know how he knew. Maybe he smelt it on my skin. I nodded. It was as though Akuchi were looking through me. He said nothing more, but stood and rolled his massive shoulders back, and left the room.

I shut the indoctrination chamber and was making my way to my own chambers when I met Wretched. The wounded Space Marine that had arrived with Inquisitor Ayo had been disposed of by Carn, and Wretched had been given the job of removing the grav-bier.

It was wide and heavy, and Wretched was struggling to get it through the doorway. His mouth kept opening and closing as he looked from the bier to the doorway he was trying to fit it through.

‘Let me help you,’ I said.

He smoothed the lank hair back from his head and nodded. I put my hands to the end. It moved easily now without the weight of the wounded Astartes inside.

‘Where is it to go to?’

He looked surprised, but answered, ‘The astropathic choir.’

XI

‘Follow me,’ commanded ‘Last’ Leonas.

The bier was heavy and his strides were so much greater than ours. We had to hurry to keep up. Lavelle and I exchanged looks. Neither of us knew what we were being summoned for, or if it was a mark of honour, or of simply being the first thralls that he had happened upon.

We went lower than I had ever been before, along galleries of mouldering busts so old and dusty that I had to hold my nose to stop the sneezes. Trophy chambers, whose servitor attendants had died so long ago that their remains were desiccated corpses, held up only by their metal implants. Spiral staircases that seemed to corkscrew down into the very roots of the rock upon which we lived, to where the grav-plates had not been tuned for generations. And then we went yet deeper.

Leonas barely paused, but the gravity was so strong in places it dragged me to the floor and I had to crawl along like a babe that could not yet walk. At the end, sweat was pouring from my face, and Leonas had all but disappeared down the long corridor.

He turned and commanded us. ‘Hurry!’ Just one word and Lavelle and I hauled ourselves up and after him.

We went down into the very bedrock of the asteroid that was the heart of our bastion. The corridors here were not crafted from cut stone but excavated from the rock itself, a heavy black anthracite, the darkness glittering with embedded crystals.

Leonas opened a gene-locked metal gateway, and we were in what I learned later was the Hall of Vengeance. The hall was dark but there were niches along the walls, from which the green light of stasis screens fell. There were treasures there, of which I can never speak. Unholy, xenos artefacts.

A shield of golden filigree inset with jewels flickered with xenos faces. A blue-steel falchion with a wire-worked handle stood next to it. There was a power spear with a metal shaft, entwined with a two-headed snake. There was the largest hammer I have ever seen, with triple power-generating coils set into the haft. But what struck me most was the ornate detail of this object. Its surface was inlaid with the golden symbol of the Deathwatch in a repeating pattern, each one no longer than my thumb is wide, and each one intersected with the next. Just that must have taken months of work. It spoke of an artificer of great craft and skill. It was beyond the ability of unenhanced man.

We went on, through triple gene-printed doorways. I smelt the musky scent of the Lone Wolf in the darkness, but I never saw him.

I remember thinking, so this is where the Lone Wolf abides. But that thought was quickly thrust from my mind.

Brother Leonas stopped and said, ‘We are about to enter the Chamber of Preservation.’

Of course we knew of this place, but none of us had ever seen it or heard it spoken of by one of the battle-brothers. Lavelle and I glanced at each other. This was where extinct life forms were kept in stasis. Xenos most unholy.

Leonas moved slowly. He paused before a spidery-looking life form with thick, leathery skin and a round mouth set with sharp fangs. ‘That was a dharlok,’ he said, and stopped before another green object with folds of dead, warty skin, ‘That was an ustoll.’

Each creature had a label of carved stone. There were the drganods; the astrix; an amorphous pair of poisonous tullut.

My skin crawled at the sight of them. They were unholy. Too dangerous to be allowed to survive. I could hear Lavelle choking back his disgust. I thought he might turn as Benn had done.

‘You should not be here,’ a resonant voice declared. The bass note filled the room. Disturbed motes of dust vibrated at the timbre.

It was not Wretched who spoke. It could not be Leonas either. He was dead. I was standing here alone, as if woken from a dream.

I do not know how I got there, but before my eyes plaited ropes of hair hung down. The single blade of a lightning claw pressed into the skin beneath my throat, and pushed my head upwards.

The Lone Wolf glared down at me. His albino eyes were flecked with cold blue and bloody pink. The eyelashes and bushy brows were the purest white. I felt his gaze boring into me like a termite into rock.

He lifted me with the blade. I felt it start to slice my skin. Or rather, I should say, my skin parted under the pressure of the razor edge. Warm blood flowed out. I tried to swallow, but I felt the blade slice deeper. I wanted to pull away, but I knew that it would be death to do so. I hung there, lifted to the very tips of my toes, as he glared into my soul.

I heard the whine of motors within his suit of armour. He grinned. It was a chilling sight. A second blade flicked upwards.

It was a swift movement. The blade was so sharp I barely felt the pain. But the blood gushed out of the wound where my ear had been.

I watched with horror as the missing appendage was lifted on the blade of the lightning claw to the mouth of the Lone Wolf. His lupine nostrils savoured the scent of my blood, and then, to my horror, he tasted my flesh, his pale grin now stained red.

‘You have been enslaved.’ Jotunn grinned. ‘Where are you…?’

The words he spoke were not to me, but something inside me. Those pink eyes bored into me and then suddenly he smiled.

‘I have you now!’

XII

Jotunn always moved too fast for his size. He left me far behind. He vaulted the stairs up through Picket’s Watch, raging like a growing storm and scattering any who tried to stop him.

The doors leading to the astropathic chamber had been sealed from within. A crowd of thralls stood before it. They threw themselves at him and his claws sparked with lightning. A mist of blood rose in his wake as he carved them into lumps of dying meat. There was no defence against his power and fury. He left the entry hall splattered with gore as he smashed through the doors.

He found Baynk in the antechamber. The astropath was pressed up into the far corner where the ceiling met the wall, hands splayed as they clung to the gothic tracery.

Baynk still breathed despite his torment.

His body had been reformed into a circle of moulded flesh, his tortured face embedded in the apex. It too had been transformed, like his bones were no more than putty. His blind eyes were pressed tightly shut, and from his mouth came a mewling sound that was not human.

In the centre of the circle that his body made, there was not wall or ceiling, but a swirling violet mist studded with pale yellow light.

It was a scene that had played in the nightmares of hypno-indoctrination a thousand times. The repetitive mewling was a call. A summons to others of its kind to find their way across the immaterium.

With a roar of animal fury, Jotunn leapt from the ground. What had once been Baynk died under the blow. There was a spray of blood and a burst of pressure as the immaterial gateway slammed shut, and the remains of Baynk slid from the wall onto the floor.

XIII

Willingly or otherwise, Inquisitor Ayo had brought the most deadly of all xenos into our midst: an enslaver.

It controlled us all. We were puppets held within its unholy grasp. It willed us to slow the Adeptus Astartes down, and everyone was running to fulfil its bidding.

Kitchen staff. Menials. Artificers. Even the servitors inset into the walls were trying to run. Their arms were pumping. Their bodies struggled to free themselves from the flesh-sockets.

I was among them as the enslaver turned us against our masters. Inquisitor Ayo had been too strong for the enslaver, but his retainers had been easy fare. The blood of the inquisitor was on their hands. We did not care. We formed a human shield, hundreds strong, clogging the corridors.

The Deathwatch kill-team marched towards us, shoving us all aside.

I was at the back, standing next to Lavelle, just within the void-gate of the Inquisitorial lighter.

My hand trembles to admit this, but it was I who pressed the closure-stud. I was traitor to us all and I felt revulsion as the ramp began to lift.

Jotunn powered through the wall of bodies.

I called and begged for him. ‘Here!’ I shouted. ‘Master!’ I jammed the ramp. He could storm up and kill this monster and free us all. It was my duty to serve. Even I, pitiful Nightside.

Except, of course, it would not let me.

The xenos was too strong. Too strong for all of us. Its mind was like a poisonous gas, enveloping us all. Some it compelled into acts of defiance in the face of Jotunn and the others, acts of self-destruction and oblivion.

Lavelle and I saw and resisted and obeyed completely.

We closed the airlock. Lavelle and I locked the seals. Seconds later, the lighter lifted up and our escape was just beginning.

All the time we travelled, the servitors reported in constant monotone. The strike cruiser Nemesis was following us, and although we wished for it to catch us, there was nothing we could do to hasten that moment.

The enslaver hung in a miasma of its own making, a balloon creature with lurid pink, trailing tentacles and two small maniples. It was contemptuous of us. We were conscious of ourselves and our desires, but they were all overridden by the compulsion of the enslaver.

I tried to summon my willpower, to find a chink in the mental chains that bound me. I tried a slow unpicking of the mental bonds. I could not resist. It was as if I was held in the grip of Jotunn and was trying to pick his fingers away. There was nothing I could do.

Only Lavelle resisted. Whether his implants gave him some protection or not, I cannot say. But suddenly he broke free of its control and leapt at it with his bare hands.

‘For the Emperor!’ he snarled through clenched teeth.

It spun about. Each tentacle ended in a thick sucking pad. They covered his face, and he let out a low muffled moan as it burned his mind out. His body spasmed, then he dropped to the floor and lay twitching for a few minutes, before he died.

XIV

The Nemesis caught us up after what felt like a lifetime of servitude. We were in orbit above the hive world of Kabronus. Skratan and Carn led the boarding party. They entered our ship in the generatorium, mobs scrambling to fend them off.

Seconds later, Jotunn’s personal boarding torpedo smashed into the bridge. The room was deserted except for the banks of servitor drones, whose monotone reports ran one over the other. Jotunn’s nose twitched. The reek of xenos was overpowering. We had all ceased to resist. We stood dumb as stone, appalled by the service we had given to the foul xenos.

When Jotunn spoke, it was not to us.

‘They have fled,’ he growled. His pink eyes were fierce as he stared at the ship’s log. The escape capsules had been jettisoned in the seconds before they had boarded. He scrolled up the data screens.

The contrails of the escape pods were a faint white against the sooty brown of the smog-blighted planet. They had scattered onto the world. And which one held the enslaver, they could not tell.

Night was falling on Kabronus as the scuttled Inquisitorial cruiser tumbled into the upper atmosphere and began to burn up.

The battle-brothers of the Deathwatch had returned to their strike cruiser, Nemesis. The serfs had been quarantined below. They would be dealt with in time. But now, on the bridge, Watch-Master Jotunn punched in the code for Exterminatus.

He was the thin thread upon which humanity hung. Without warriors such as he, mankind would have been erased from history. He felt the ignition of the missile within the core of the cruiser, watched it streak towards the planet’s upper atmosphere. He felt no pity, no remorse, no guilt.

His pink eyes reflected yellow fire as the first explosion set off a chain reaction that would incinerate the atmosphere of the planet. This was the only sure way of destroying the enslaver. The billion other lives were all collateral damage.

The destruction of a planet was not an action taken lightly, but it meant that humanity would survive. And for this, great sacrifices were necessary. Jotunn understood this, as did all his battle-brothers. Their own stories would also end with violent death. It was only a matter of time.

And time, the albino noted, was always running out.

Especially for the billions upon billions on the hive world of Kabronus. For them, the inconsequential trifles of love, wealth and power were about to come to a fiery end.

But humanity, at least, would continue.

SORROWCROWN

Nicholas Wolf

I

The first time I walked the halls of Quan Zhou I had lived, as I later learned, the equivalent of thirteen Terran standard years.

My battle wounds, fresh from the great tribal clash that had drawn the attention of the immortals, still pained me, despite the unguents of the emchi. As a boy, accustomed to naught but hide tents between myself and the sky, my mind could barely process standing within the massive edifice of stone and adamantium. For a time, during my transformation into a warrior of the ordu, I’d believed all buildings would echo the awesome, savage majesty of Quan Zhou.

The illusion had been shattered as I’d left Chogoris behind, descending into urban battlefields on worlds across the Emperor’s realm.

Whereas Quan Zhou possessed an echo of the natural order beneath the savage trappings we’d lavished upon it, most Imperial cities were cluttered, broken bones piled atop one another by the ruthless engine of industry. Quan Zhou’s reaching bastions were at one with the heavens atop great Khum Karta, yet most Imperial cities were claustrophobic labyrinths that shunned sunlight and air. Though Quan Zhou was far from unsoiled, dirtied by the natural detritus of the ordu’s training and feasting, nothing compared to Imperial conurbations, encrusted with millennia of chemical filth and the dust of human misery.

Anvam City, corroded heart of Yuvan Tertius, is no different.

Flying over the ramshackle city in the Righteous Contempt’s Thunderhawk, Bellum, I find myself uncomfortably reminded of the hain’s sprawling scrap-slums. As a Chogorian, born beneath skies that never ended no matter how far or how fast you rode to chase them, to think that some fifteen million souls once occupied this cluttered, tumbledown mess seems almost unfathomable.

‘Approaching Anvam Command in sixty seconds,’ Techmarine Arkamedies announces from the cockpit in his clipped Macragge argot.

Sergeant Beymund sits across the cabin from me, as far as is possible in the tight confines of the Thunderhawk, passing a brazier of spiced incense over the bolt pistol chained to his wrist. A prayer litany in High Gothic whispers from his lips, made ominous by his glowering Mark III helm. I understand that there is some ritual significance to the chained weapon within the sons of Sigismund, no doubt analogous to the countless warrior customs passed down in the Jazag. Someday I wish to learn the Black Templar’s customs.

But today is not that day.

I gaze through Bellum’s windows as we break through Yuvan Tertius’ chlorine-sulphur clouds. Rolling in the void above, their metal viscera splayed to the stars, drift the remains of the planet’s defence fleet. I surveyed the remains as we left the Righteous Contempt, more perplexed by each wreck. The Shield of Holvast, a Dictator-class cruiser, had seemed hale but for a precision kill-shot to its engines. The Grim Gauntlet and Corona, Dauntless-class light cruisers, had been huddled by the corpse of the Holvast like garut cubs around their mother, united in death. Six seemingly unmolested escort vessels shared the graveyard around Yuvan Tertius, too small to pick out from the field of stars as we’d passed.

That fleet should have held for days.

‘The city appears frozen in time,’ says Pentox, cycling through the Thunderhawk’s external pict-feeds.

I gaze upon the city below – the Imperial Fist is not incorrect. Groundcars sit idle between hab-blocks, skidded into one another and abandoned. Massive ore haulers sit idling in refilling queues, empty of inhabitants. Great mining drills squat over pits brimming with precious adamantium, still, lifeless. The only movement is from mono-tasked servitors mindlessly carrying out whatever errands they’d been assigned before their masters met their mysterious ends.

I cautiously reach out again with my mind, feeling a strangely familiar pressure building against the iron walls of my soul. I’ve walked a thousand battlefields on a hundred worlds, seen mortals gruesomely killed in every conceivable manner by every conceivable foe. Their final moments inevitably carry a distinctive piquancy, a chilling sweat-stink of animal fear I can taste without truly understanding.

But this…

…this is different.

It’s as though the city is soaked in horror.

After only a few moments I slam shut the gates of my mind. My gene-forged flesh prickles as my armour prepares to inject pain-suppressives into my bloodstream, reacting as though I’ve suffered a mortal wound. I see Sergeant Beymund and Dorthos eyeing me suspiciously. Belatedly I realise my heartbeat is racing.

A thin trickle of blood drips from my nose before I quickly wipe it away.

The Black Templar stares at me as the silence stretches. I hear the click, click, click of vox-communication, interaction to which I am not privy. Pragmatically I understand why: most of Kill-Team Beymund has fought together for decades, whereas I am here to fill a void left by a fallen battle-brother they trusted.

That this is also my first Vigil does nothing to endear me, I’m sure.

‘We waste time on this graveyard,’ remarks Kordred flatly, as though discussing varieties of steppes grass, his voice rendered a toneless machine-rattle by the bionics replacing the lower half of his face.

Ray’gor, the Salamander, looks hard at the Minotaur. ‘You would consign this world to dust so quickly, brother?’

‘You saw the same augury-scans I did,’ the Minotaur shoots back. ‘I merely wish to be efficient in the destruction of our foe, who has clearly left this world.’ I’ve shared no more than a dozen words with Kordred since Watch-Captain Ur assigned me to Kill-Team Beymund, and I’ve already found myself incapable of liking him.

Torchos Sakal fidgets in his grav-couch, fingering the teeth of the largest chainsword I’ve ever seen. ‘Whatever foulness dared to touch this world will pay a thousand times over.’

Unhelmed, the Flesh Tearer’s sanguine face seems at odds with the barely restrained fury I feel thrumming from his aura. Were it not for the massive scar bisecting his jaw and the gene-forged hardening of his face, he could’ve been considered handsome in mortal terms.

Vrohn makes a growling sound next to me. I’ve never fought beside a Space Wolf before, but I’ve been given to understand by my ordu brothers that they purposefully affect an animalistic mien. For what purpose I can only conjecture, although it makes me feel strangely self-conscious of the totems and talismans hanging from my own armour.

‘But when, Torchos? My patience for this foe already wears thin,’ the Fenrisian snarls, baring his elongated fangs. ‘Hrelka thirsts for xenos blood.’

‘Your axe will taste plenty before this quest is completed,’ Beymund reassures him. ‘I know of no foe capable of such wholesale slaughter, but when I have its measure, you and I shall compete for the tallest heap of their dead.’

This pleases the warriors of the kill-team. On this point we are all in agreement.

The Space Wolf leans back in his grav-couch. ‘I bet my heap will be the tallest.’ Vrohn grins, flashing those gleaming fangs.

Kordred’s expression is rendered almost unidentifiable by the cybernetics encrusting his face, but I’d know what he was thinking even without the Arts. ‘May Lord Moloc have my head if you best me, Fenrisian,’ he grates, patting the head of his thunder hammer. Though humour isn’t an area in which I consider myself to be proficient, genuinely I can’t tell if he’s joking.

‘I recall on Davadar Prime I killed more greenskins than the two of you together,’ Torchos Sakal jibes with a subtle rev of his chainsword.

Pentox grunts. ‘We don’t all have the luxury of charging headlong into the fray,’ the Imperial Fist says reproachfully. ‘Some of us actually have to think about objectives and strategies.’

The Flesh Tearer hefts his enormous weapon. ‘I’ve fought the Emperor’s wars even longer than you have, and I’ve yet to find a problem that couldn’t be solved by slaughtering every heretic, mutant and xenos bastard in my way.’

The Astral Knight looks up from his narthecium and inclines his head solemnly at Torchos Sakal. ‘I pray you never do, brother.’

The Ultramarine, like myself, is quiet in the midst of their repartee. As a zadyin arga I’m inherently as different from my ordu brothers as an Adeptus Astartes is from a human. I’ve advised khans on battle, guided brothers on the Path of Heaven, but banter has never come easily to me, even among my fellow Chogorians. If my own tribesmen consider me solemn, I can only imagine how these Adeptus Astartes brothers see me.

Arkamedies catches me looking at him. He nods, briefly. I do not have to be a telepath, nor an Ultramarine, to understand the gesture. I return the nod.

A soft chime fills the cabin and the Techmarine taps at the Thunderhawk’s controls. A flickering data-parcel filters through the holo-projector, bathing Bellum’s interior a sickly viridian.

Beymund looks up from blessing his weapon. ‘What am I looking at, Arkamedies?’

‘Sergeant, I’ve picked up a distress beacon broadcasting from somewhere within Anvam Command,’ he announces slowly. ‘There’s someone alive down there.’

II

We encounter no life as we enter Anvam Command, nor any corpses. None of us expects to.

The moment the compound’s adamantium doors grind open we fall into position: Pentox and Arkamedies guiding us by the light of Ray’gor’s flamer; Vrohn ranging ahead; Torchos Sakal, Kordred and Dorthos on our flanks; and me as rearguard. The sergeant moves seamlessly between us, surveying it all, like an alpha berkut riding the wind.

Here and there we pass servo-skulls mindlessly ferrying messages to masters who will never return. Terminals and consoles blink and chime, utterly unaware of the horrors that have taken place. Occasionally we see a dropped lasgun, a fallen helmet – something to remind us that soldiers of the Imperium once fortified this edifice of adamantium and ferrocrete.

‘The signal is coming from the lower levels of the compound,’ Arkamedies announces as we clear the refectory.

‘Munitions bay.’ Pentox illuminates a point on the building schematic and blink-pushes it to our visor-feeds. ‘There’s a service elevator on the east end of the fortress, near the armoury.’

‘We go down by threes,’ Beymund commands. ‘Ray’gor, Vrohn, Kordred, we await your all-clear before advancing.’

The auspex returns nothing as we push deeper into the facility, yet our weapons never sit loosely in our gauntlets. The shadows are too deep here, the evidence of violence too fresh, to assume ourselves out of danger. I occasionally reach out with my mind, cautiously, seeking survivors within the Militarum structure. I sense nothing but the acidic echo of death and pain, growing stronger even through the walls of my mind.

‘Lots of blood, still no bodies,’ Kordred observes, apropos of nothing, as we sweep through the lower halls of Anvam Command. ‘Shame. We’d learn much from the corpses.’

Vrohn sniffs at the air, redolent with the iron stink of blood. ‘As above, so below,’ the Space Wolf growls, baring his fangs. ‘Looks like the entire fortress fell without a fight, same as the fleet.’

‘I’m inclined to concur,’ the sergeant says grimly. I can feel his aura, but I dare not probe too deeply. He’s frustrated. As am I – I am not accustomed to hunting shadows in the dark.

Kordred sighs like an idling engine. ‘They fell without a fight, sergeant, and yet someone managed to activate a distress beacon? I find this unlikely.’

‘Unlikely, but not impossible,’ Pentox shoots back. ‘This fortress was designed specifically to withstand an invasion and provide a point of sanctuary for survivors.’

Dorthos, walking before me with a strange glowing blade drawn, shakes his head at something on his narthecium. ‘Whatever happened on Yuvan Tertius caught the entire planetary militia off guard, fleet and soldiery, simultaneously. There is a lot of blood, but not enough to account for all the dead.’

‘I was thinking the same,’ Kordred sneers, setting my teeth on edge. ‘Whatever attacked must have licked the floor clean.’

‘The living,’ I mutter, half to myself, half to rebut the callous words of the Minotaur, ‘were not eaten. They were harvested.’

The sergeant appears at my side. ‘Harvested, Stormseer?’ The gruffness in Beymund’s tone is unmistakable, an angry burr edging his lordly intonation.

Stormseer.

A Gothic translation, neither inaccurate nor all-encompassing. He says it like a curse.

I stare at him for a long moment before silently nodding.

‘The beacon is one hundred yards ahead of us in the sub-basement munitions bay,’ Arkamedies says as he looks up from his auspex. The beacon, superimposed on our retinal displays, pulses still lower in the fortress’ bowels. ‘What say you, Tetsugei?’

My analysis is immediately forthcoming, having been in my thoughts since the moment we entered Anvam Command.

‘I say this is a trap.’

Beymund’s face is unreadable beneath his surly helm. He says nothing to me as he stalks past. I suspect I’ve voiced what my battle-brothers have already guessed.

‘We shall soon find out,’ he says forebodingly.

The munitions bay bulkhead opens with an oily hiss and we step into a yawning room, blacker than volcano-glass and still as a tomb. In the distance I can see a single lumen spluttering at the other end of the bay. My armour immediately registers a drop in temperature as we cross the threshold. Stranger still, I actually feel the sensation of cold seeping into my flesh as though my power armour, easily capable of withstanding the chill of the void, is naught but cloth.

‘Feels like Helwinter in here,’ Vrohn says as we cautiously advance into the darkness, weapons scanning for targets.

The sergeant gestures to the Salamander. ‘Brother Ray’gor, keep our exit clear.’

Strangely, I find myself squinting as we explore farther into the bay. It takes me a moment to realise that my transhuman eyes are struggling to see in the darkness. The lumens on Arkamedies’ servo-harness snap on; the shadows seem to devour the beams of light before my eyes. I doubt even the Salamander’s Balefire flamer could penetrate the gloom, nor the cold.

‘In case I hadn’t made my position abundantly clear,’ Kordred grouses as he hefts his thunder hammer, ‘I concur with the Stormseer’s assessment about this being a trap.’

‘Let them spring it,’ the Space Wolf replies with a wet-lipped edge of hunger to his voice. ‘Hrelka is ready to meet her foe.’

The Ultramarine makes a noise of derision. ‘Common sense would disagree with willingly walking into a trap, brother. Sergeant, are yo–’

‘I know, Arkamedies,’ Beymund says sharply, cutting him off. ‘I know.’

We finally approach the source of the distress call. What we see sets my teeth on edge.

In the pool of sickly light is a man, or rather the remains of one. His body appears to have been vivisected by a demented surgeon and arranged on a cruel, hooked contraption, festooned with wires, tubes and vials. It’s as though he has been frozen in the moment he exploded from the inside out, flesh torn from muscles and muscles torn from bones. Scraps of cloth hang dripping from the mutilated wreck. The stinging reek of blood and chemicals lingers even in the frigid air.

I see Vrohn grasp a Fenrisian totem worked into his black beard. Dorthos’ hand strays to the soul-blade belted at his waist like a talisman. The guttural idling of Torchos Sakal’s chainsword quickens.

I grip the haft of my force staff tighter. I’ve seen this before.

‘By the Emperor,’ the Apothecary breathes aloud, moving to examine the body.

The corpse twitches.

The foul contraption begins to whir and squeal with unnatural life. The man’s bloodshot eyes snap open. Panicked gasps saw from his lipless mouth. The hooked armature spreads open, stretching the wreckage of the man’s body in every direction. Vials of foul chemicals gurgle and dump into his veins.

And then he starts screaming.

Some fiendish apparatus sutured into his throat amplifies his pained shrieks, almost loud enough to burst my genhanced eardrums. I can feel his screaming reverberating through my skull. The contraption twists and gyrates. Tendons snap. Bones crack wetly. I can see his lungs, preserved by an infestation of tubes, pumping frantically in his chest.

I thrust out with my hand and a wall of power slams into the tortured soul with the flattening force of a Land Raider. The single lumen explodes in a cloud of sparks.

‘Damn you, witch!’ Beymund roars. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘There was nothing that could be done for him,’ I reply flatly. ‘To allow him to continue to suffer would have been cruel.’

The poor soul’s scream lingers unnaturally in the dark, frigid air – echoing, calling.

Beymund stomps over to me. One of his eye-lenses is cracked. ‘The galaxy is cruel, White Scar, in case this fact had escaped you on your primitive backworld.’

I meet his gaze, not sternly, but not submissively. ‘I know you are angry, sergeant, but I do not apologise for what I have done.’

The sergeant growls, his glowering helm inches from my face. ‘You just killed our only source of intelligence as to what befell Yuvan Tertius.’

Summoning.

Something shifts in the unnatural shadows above our heads, like a black scab peeling from ebon flesh. The moment my lungs fill with breath to shout my warning, I already know I’ll be too late.

A creature of pure darkness drops silently from the ceiling onto Pentox’s back, blade in hand. The Imperial Fist’s helmeted head rolls from his shoulders in a fountain of blood.

Without a word, Kill-Team Beymund’s weapons open in a hammering fusillade, bolters and plasma guns and graviton weapons thundering into the shadows above our heads. Even the light of our muzzle flashes vanishes. With a roar of hate I slam my staff into the ground and unleash crackling tongues of lightning into the darkness. For the briefest moment before the light is swallowed I see our foe clearly: sinewy, inky forms armed with hooked blades, clothed in patchwork garments of human skin.

There are hundreds of them. We’re completely surrounded.

Mechanically we form into a defensive circle around Pentox’s body, guns blazing, weapons drawn. The vile creatures dart through the unnatural shadows, disappearing and reappearing between bolter shells and plasma bolts. It’s like shooting at mist we can barely see. I curse myself for not wearing my helm, but something tells me my auto-senses would be equally incapable of seeking these creatures.

‘Kill-team, tactical retreat!’ the sergeant bellows over the chaos. ‘Fall back to the Thunderhawk, Delta pattern!’

‘I need to harvest his progenoids!’ Dorthos yells back.

‘No time,’ Beymund snaps. ‘We’ll carry his body with us.’

Vrohn, Torchos Sakal and Kordred are already charging towards the exit, frost axe, chainsword and thunder hammer screaming for blood. Beymund and Dorthos grab Pentox’s corpse. Arkamedies and I fall in behind them, protecting our rear with grav-gun and force staff.

The Space Wolf howls an endless stream of curses in the tongue of Fenris as he throws himself heedlessly towards Ray’gor. The Flesh Tearer and the Minotaur brutally hack down any of the shadow-creatures that stand in their way. I can tell from the cadence of our boots pounding against the ferrocrete floor that we’re already slowing.

‘We are the hammer of the Emperor, the bane of His foes!’ Beymund roars over the cacophony of bolter fire and hideous xenos shrieking. ‘Purge the xenos! Suffer not the xenos to live!’

The accursed things are fast, fast enough to lunge through the combined defences of an Ordo Xenos kill-team and score wounds on us. I hear Arkamedies grunt beside me as one of them stabs him in the gut. Beymund roars in hatred as an ebon blade slips under his arm and he drops Pentox’s armoured corpse. The Black Templar draws his power sword and chops the attacker in half. Dorthos cries out. I hear ceramite clatter heavily to the ground.

‘My arm!’

‘Grab Pentox!’ Beymund shouts.

‘Leave him, sergeant!’ Arkamedies yells.

One of the monsters throws itself on me. Icy claws grip on to my pauldrons, digging impossibly into the ceramite. Its oil-slick face shifts from a glowering mask into a yawning lamprey maw. I scrabble at it. It slips between my gauntlets, like grasping smoke. Cold pain blossoms between my gorget and my psyker hood as its fangs sink into my neck.

Arkamedies turns his grav-gun on it. The creature dodges the beam, impossibly nimble, but pulls away from me just slightly as it does. It’s all I need. I grab its head in my gauntlet and channel a torrent of electric rage into it. It shrieks briefly before its body bursts in an explosion of ectoplasmic gore.

‘We’re not leaving Pentox!’ Beymund shouts. ‘Someone help me!’

‘They’re cutting us off!’ Vrohn roars between savage bellows.

‘Kordred, help me carry him!’

Grunt, grind, click. ‘A little… busy.’

‘I need reinforcement!’ Ray’gor yells over the vox.

I spare a half-second’s glance towards the exit. Distantly I see the Salamander’s flamer roaring, but he’s hopelessly outnumbered. The dim patch of light is choked with shadowy foes, pouring from the blackness above as though it were a portal. It’s so dark I can’t even tell how many we face, or how many we’ve killed.

All I know is we’re being overrun, worn down, second by second, cut by cut by cut. We’re going to die down here.

‘Protect me!’ I yell as I holster my plasma pistol.

‘What are you doing?’ Beymund roars at me. ‘Return fire, White Scar! That’s an order.’

I wish I had time to explain, but I don’t. None of us do. ‘Trust me!’ I shout back. And then, without waiting for a response, I close my eyes.

My mind opens to the heavens like a takhta bloom. A torrent of wailing horror washes over me, but I stand strong against it, like Khum Karta weathering the Altak’s mighty storms. Ancient Khorchin mantras tumble from my lips, the first I learned standing atop Ayanga.

Someone yells. A distraction. I let the Altak’s winds carry it from my mind.

My hands grip my staff as thrashing force builds around me. I drink the power of the heavens, willing it, commanding it with my words. I am zadyin arga. My breath is the storm wind, my words the thunderclap.

I feel an icy crackle roar around me. ‘Bastard!’ I hear Vrohn howl over the clatter of blades and the screams of monsters. He seems far away. He sounds hurt. Badly.

I feel lightning sizzle around my psychic hood, slithering down my arms through the talismans adorning my armour. My chant grows to a defiant roar. Old words, powerful words. I am the storm.

‘Hurry!’

Something stabs me in the stomach. My armour acknowledges the wound with a klaxon. The pain doesn’t grow worse, so I assume whatever impaled me is now dead. It doesn’t matter.

‘Tetsugei!’

I open my eyes.

The bone-shaking roar of thunder eclipses the cacophony of war. Lightning explodes out of my staff, out of my hands, out of my eyes, so bright that not even the shadows of this foul place can drink it. My brothers are hurled from their feet. My enemies are incinerated, blasted apart by the fury of the storm. My storm. I am zadyin arga. I am the fury of Chogoris, the rage of the Altak made manifest. Nothing can stand before my wrath.

And suddenly, like a great breath being expended, it’s over.

My eyes grow… heavy.

The aftermath of my assault leaves bright smears across my vision. I feel the rush of cold wind against my face, cut short as my knees jarringly strike the floor. Breath saws out of me in ragged gasps. I lean on my crackling staff. Boot steps. I hear boot steps. The way is clear. The kill-team is retreating. I close my eyes again.

Hands grab me by my pauldrons. I feel myself being hauled to my feet. I can stand. Just.

We fall back through the sublevels of Anvam Command. The howls of monsters chase us, coming from everyone and nowhere. I see xenos faces leering from every shadow, draped in oily, corpse-white hair… blurry, indistinct. Arkamedies grunts beneath my weight… He’s the one who grabbed me. I hear his dataslate chiming… distantly, distress beacons coming online across Anvam City.

The world doesn’t fully resolve into focus until I see the ramp of our Thunderhawk closing. Bellum’s engines are roaring, carrying us into the air before it’s fully sealed.

Silence descends, but for ragged breathing and whirring servos, thrumming power armour and crackling energy fields. Post-battle. The aftermath. We have a word for it in Khorchin, daraa ni: the period where the killing has ended but both mind and body are still on the battlefield. The few precious moments before the thrill fades from the blood and the wounds begin to ache, each heartbeat bringing a warrior closer to the time of mourning.

I always hated those moments, even before I’d been taken to Quan Zhou. Life under an endless sky breeds an expectation of interminability into Chogorians. Even though we know all things end, some things still don’t seem as though they should.

But Adeptus Astartes do not suffer daraa ni the way that mortals do. Their hearts become too hard, too engineered for such foreboding melancholy. And yet, as I watch the survivors of Kill-Team Beymund sink into their normal grav-couches, making Pentox’s absence painfully obvious, I see the traces of humanity among them.

Beymund takes off his helm and stares blankly into his glowering mask. Arkamedies reviews screeds of battle-figures from the cockpit. Vrohn, bearded face charred by flame, mutters quiet curses in the tongue of Fenris. Torchos Sakal sits rigid with clenched teeth and balled fists, statuesque but for the infinitesimal tremor of rage coursing through him. Ray’gor’s head is bowed in prayer. Dorthos tends to his amputated arm with his narthecium gauntlet. Kordred furiously cleans his hammer of ectoplasmic gore.

If I were among my brothers I’d know the things to say, the Khoomei dirges to sing. But I’m not among my brothers; I’m an outsider, respected but unloved, filling a void left by a fallen brother. Though my Vigil with the Deathwatch will likely last the remainder of my life, I doubt I will ever see anything but distance in their eyes.

Suddenly Beymund surges from his seat and stomps towards the cockpit. He shoulders past the servitor hardwired into the pilot’s throne and activates the vox-array.

‘Captain Gravon, do you read?’ he hails.

The grainy voice of Augustus Gravon, captain and shipmaster of the Gladius-class frigate Righteous Contempt, fills the cabin. ‘There’s considerable interference, my lord. Source unknown,’ comes the clipped reply, warped by static. ‘But I have a lock. How may I serve, Lord Beymund?’

‘Charge the Contempt’s lance arrays,’ the sergeant commands.

There’s a long moment of silence, broken only by the howling of the wind and the ominous hiss of static. Then comes, ‘Aye, my lord, charging now. What is your command?’

I’ve purposefully made a habit of not probing my battle-brothers’ minds or reading their auras. Such an invasion of privacy is unheard of among the ordu, and I dare not peer into these warriors who I barely know. Still, the sheer incandescence of the Black Templar’s rage draws my mind, like a berkut drawn to a funeral pyre.

‘The moment we’re clear of the stratosphere I want you to burn this thrice-cursed city to the ground,’ Beymund growls through clenched teeth, voice dripping with cold fury. ‘Starting with Anvam Command.’

III

Our return to the Righteous Contempt is sombre, abrupt and efficient.

The warriors of the ordu have a special relationship with war and death. The battlefield is where we sons of the Altak find our calling, where only the roar of our mounts eclipses the sound of our laughter. Our brethren fall, yes, but their passing is merely the inevitable fulfilment of why we were born. The fallen are remembered in Khoomei choruses and goblets of chinyua, immortalised in harrowing tales of heroism and the forging of new legends. The halls of Quan Zhou echo with our feasting and fighting, boasting and laughing.

I can recall only one other battle in my life marked by such solemnity: Blackheart’s razing of Chogoris. There were no songs sung in those dark days, even after we’d cast his yaksha horde from our soil.

Some wounds never heal.

Captain Augustus Gravon meets us in the Contempt’s hangar bay, flanked by a retinue of officers, servitors and elite armsmen. He’s old by human standards, short hair cropped close around the bionics embedded in his scalp, stern mouth hidden behind a white moustache. Still, he carries himself like a soldier, straight-backed and broad-shouldered. His flesh even lacks the waxen artificiality and pale hue of juvenat treatments.

Without being asked, he produces a dataslate from his greatcoat and hands it to Beymund.

‘Anvam Command is completely destroyed and lance arrays are recharging, my lord,’ he announces tersely. ‘By my estimation the razing of the city should be completed within the hour.’

The sergeant appraises the shipmaster sternly. ‘Hasten your bombardment, captain. Employ the macro cannons if you have to. We are leaving now.’

Gravon bows stiffly. ‘So it shall be, my lord. Do you have a bearing in mind?’

I see the muscles in the sergeant’s jaw clenching and unclenching. ‘Yuvan Tertius is lost, making Yuvan Secundus the next logical target. Even if our foe isn’t moving in-system, we need to inform Secundus of what happened.’

The old shipmaster nods to one of his adjutants, who departs back to the bridge. ‘By your word, sergeant.’ Gravon bows again. ‘I’ve compiled diagnostic data from the remains of the Holvast and its escorts. Shall I prepare the strategium for debrief?’

Beymund nods. ‘Brother Arkamedies will provide the data-inloads from Anvam Command. I will be at prayer in the chapel, and do not wish to be disturbed. The rest of you, see to your wounds and wargear – we debrief in the strategium in thirty minutes.’

‘Sergeant, may I join you at prayer?’ Ray’gor asks.

The Black Templar is silent for a moment, then acquiesces before wordlessly stomping towards the chapel. The Salamander follows behind him with head bowed.

‘Arkamedies, can you attend me in the apothecarion?’ Dorthos asks, raising his amputated limb. ‘I’ll need help configuring a bionic, if we have a suitable one.’ The Techmarine nods.

Vrohn, his face half scorched by icy flame, snorts and spits on the ground. ‘I’ll be in the sparring cages, if anyone wants to get knocked on their arse,’ he growls.

Arkamedies puts a hand on his pauldron. ‘You should see Brother Dorthos too, Vrohn. You’re hurt.’

The Space Wolf shrugs him off, hard. Too hard. ‘Fenris breeds hardier stock than Macragge,’ he snarls, lips curling back. Then, as if stung by his own words, he cringes. I see the tiniest flicker pass across his scarred face, the subtle lessening of the angry creases around his fanged mouth. I sense this is the closest Vrohn of Fenris ever gets to an apology.

‘Another time, perhaps, we shall test it, Fenrisian,’ Arkamedies says, not unkindly.

Vrohn chuffs but says nothing as his battle-brothers depart for the apothecarion. ‘Flesh Tearer, to first blood?’

Torchos Sakal slowly turns around. His pupils have contracted to angry pinpricks, and I can smell the chemical stink of the combat-stimms still coursing through his blood.

‘Consider yourself fortunate I am withholding my wrath for the scum that killed Pentox,’ he says, his voice low and dangerous, before stalking off towards his quarters.

Vrohn, for his part, looks momentarily taken aback before turning to Kordred. ‘Minotaur, what say you?’

Kordred sighs like a malfunctioning engine. ‘Leave it alone, Vrohn,’ he grates. Then he departs without a word.

And then it’s just the Fenrisian and I.

Vrohn the Space Wolf eyes me with an unease barely betrayed by the curling of his lips and the narrowing of his grey eyes. He turns and stalks towards the sparring chambers, and doesn’t ask me to follow him. I didn’t expect him to.

IV

The strategium on the Righteous Contempt is as much a trophy room as it is a place for planning war.

The bronze-dipped skull of a massive tyranid monstrosity hangs over the main holo-projector, looming as though ready to devour us. Bizarre, ramshackle greenskin weapons hang suspended in containment chambers, some still attached to the arms of their defeated owners. The tawny stave of one of the t’au leadership caste sits mounted on the wall beside other esoteric weapons of that conniving species. Trinkets and weapons, armour scraps and skulls fill in the open spaces, yet clearly allow room for more additions.

In all of the Righteous Contempt, this place reminds me most of Khum Karta.

‘Fifteen million souls,’ Beymund intones to the assembly of Adeptus Astartes battle-brothers and Captain Gravon’s officers. ‘Fifteen million souls these godless xenos have taken from the Emperor’s realm. And now they have taken one of our battle-brothers as well. I swear to you all, in the name of Dorn and the Emperor and by the blood of Sigismund, that we will repay the enemy for their blood.’

‘Now we just need to determine whose blood we’re spilling,’ Vrohn grunts. His face is a raw mess of Larraman scabbing and transhuman scar tissue. He didn’t visit the Apothecary. Of course.

Ray’gor raises his chin. ‘There are battle records in the watchtower archives pertaining to the Cleansing of Por’ynx Prime several centuries ago. The kill-team encountered a xenos species known as the hrud. Shadowy creatures.’

Torchos Sakal grunts. ‘I’ve also read the archives of Por’ynx Prime. I tried to cut those damned shadows in half and they flitted between my chainsword’s teeth like smoke. Not to mention that battle took place in the Ghoul Stars, halfway across the galaxy.’

‘Doesn’t mean they couldn’t be here,’ Kordred interjects. ‘Genestealers can appear far from tyranid incursion.’

Vrohn raises an eyebrow. ‘Are you implying those things we fought were genestealers?’

The Minotaur sighs like an idling engine. ‘I know you’re Fenrisian, but that doesn’t mean you have to be obtuse.’

I clear my throat.

The Black Templar raises a hand to silence the others. ‘You have something to add, Stormseer?’

I feel the eyes of the assembled warriors and sailors turn to me. ‘Mandrakes,’ I say.

‘Mandrakes,’ Beymund repeats, slowly. ‘I pray some further elaboration will be forthcoming.’

The eyes of the kill-team all turn to me. Among my brothers I would never have felt uncomfortable with such scrutiny, but here, amongst cousins whose families are strangers, I cannot help but feel an outsider.

‘Yes, mandrakes,’ I explain, looking for the proper wording. ‘They are the absence of light made flesh. Assassins that haunt the darkness of Commorragh. Ancient and cruel.’

‘Commorragh,’ Vrohn snarls through bared fangs. ‘The Dark City.’

‘Yes,’ I nod as I feel surety forming in my gut. ‘We face the drukhari.’

Beymund regards me strangely from beneath furrowed brows. ‘And you did not feel compelled to reveal this to us sooner?’

I feel my jaw set at the barb in his tone. ‘I did not know. Only suspicions.’

Arkamedies highlights the compiled post-mortem data on Yuvan Tertius’ picket fleet. ‘With respect, Tetsugei, the drukhari simply do not possess the firepower to have carved through the Shield of Holvast and its fleet so efficiently.’

‘Not to mention the scale of abduction and lack of resistance from the Militarum forces,’ Dorthos adds.

‘I know this,’ I reply. ‘I have fought drukhari before.’

‘And yet you still conclude they are responsible,’ the sergeant snaps. It isn’t a question.

I meet the Black Templar’s thunderous gaze, feeling the Altak-bred thirst for battle pulsing in my neck, but I’ve walked the Path of Heaven, and I never let the anger thundering in my hearts reach my eyes. ‘I do.’

The sergeant walks in front of me and brings himself eye to eye with me. ‘You did know what we faced though, didn’t you?’ he growls as his voice drops to an angry whisper. ‘Before we even entered Anvam Command.’

I suddenly feel as though I’m a neophyte back in the Lightning Tower, being questioned by the zadyin arga. It has been a long, long time since anyone, even of the ordu, has spoken to me thusly.

‘There is a saying among the wisest of Chogoris,’ I say slowly, evenly. ‘To speak a careless thought is to release a stallion without a bridle.’

Beymund’s eyes narrow. The muscles in his jaw bunch. Even without the Arts I can feel his anger radiating from him.

‘On the Thunderhawk, I saw you performing your… witchcraft,’ he snarls. ‘I saw the blood running from your nose.’

I pause, searching for the right words to explain what I saw, what I felt. To describe this even to a non-psyker battle-brother of the ordu would be hard enough; to explain it to these strange cousins is harder.

I sigh. ‘Yuvan, both the earth and the space above it, they were cloaked in an… echo.’

‘An echo,’ the sergeant repeats slowly, almost mockingly. ‘And what is it like?’

‘It is… hard to explain.’

‘Try,’ he growls, his voice low, dangerous.

My indignation forces me to snap. ‘Like having your bones twisted until they crack. Having your flesh peeled away strip by strip. Watching everyone you have ever cared about murdered before you. All at once.’

‘I felt nothing of the sort,’ Vrohn barks, breaking the tense silence that follows.

‘And you wouldn’t,’ I explain. ‘Whatever it was, it was clearly of the heavens.’

‘The heavens?’

‘The warp,’ I reply, finding the more common Gothic term.

Torchos Sakal jolts out of whatever ruminations have gripped him. ‘The warp. So, daemonic?’

I shake my head. ‘I have fought the yaksha. The daemons. This was not of them. There is more to the heavens than yaksha.’

‘Then why did none of us sense this “echo” you speak of?’ Kordred asks.

I think back to Anvam City, the etheric taste of mortal terror corrupting the very air. ‘You are Adeptus Astartes,’ I say, having no better explanation. ‘We do not feel fear, not the way humans do, and not the way drukhari do.’

‘Your analysis seems to imply this ‘echo’ was the by-product of a weapon, Tetsugei,’ Arkamedies interjects. ‘Am I correct in this assumption?’

I scour my mind, seeking a more appropriate term, but nothing suffices, or at least nothing I can choose with sufficient certainty. ‘Yes. I think so.’

‘And do you know of any such weapon in the drukhari arsenal?’ the Salamander asks.

Would that I did.

‘No.’

Vrohn slaps his knee and makes that awful Fenrisian bark. ‘Well then, that should make this fairly straightforward,’ he laughs. ‘Beymund, at what point can I get back to killing these damnable things?’

The Black Templar nods to Gravon. ‘Shipmaster?’

The old captain stands and clears his throat, crossing his arms behind his back. ‘Yuvan Secundus is three days’ travel, if the current warp tide holds. I’ve had Mistress Olema dispatch astropathic communications to Secundus Command.’

Beymund scowls at the hololithic projection of the Yuvan System. I can tell his genhanced mind is calculating distances and timetables, because mine is as well. ‘Any receipt?’

‘None as of yet, my lord,’ Gravon replies with the fortitude of someone accustomed to delivering bad news. ‘But I shall have Mistress Olema inform you the moment there is.’

The Ultramarine magnifies the area around Yuvan Secundus. Data-screeds concerning its fortifications, battlements and defences crackle to life. ‘Yuvan Secundus’ fleet is twice the size of Tertius’. If the drukhari strike there next the Naval forces should be able to hold until we arrive.’

‘Do we have anything to indicate the strength of the enemy fleet?’ Beymund asks.

The old shipmaster nods. ‘With the addition of Lord Arkamedies’ data I was able to compile a record of the fleet’s augur-logs. I can at least recreate what they saw on their scanners before they were killed.’

‘And what is that?’ Beymund almost snaps.

Gravon sighs. ‘Nothing of use, my lord. Only the Holvast’s short-range augur logs show a single, massive blank spot approaching from the east. Somehow it evaded detection until it was almost on top of them.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Some unknown manner of xenos jamming technology creating a false return large enough to hide a fleet of considerable size,’ he says sourly. I can tell it rankles him to have so few details about our prey. ‘There could be any number of ships in that shadow.’

‘Nonetheless, Secundus’ fleet is larger, of a higher calibre, and its orbital fortifications are denser,’ Arkamedies rebuts. ‘Add to it the Righteous Contempt and our escorts and we make a formidable force.’

‘They will not hold,’ I say.

Gravon visibly bristles, shifting his white moustache. ‘You doubt the fortitude of the Imperial Navy, my lord?’ he says evenly. Aside from the zarts who serve us at Quan Zhou, I am accustomed to mortals shrinking before me. Not so this one.

I like him.

I incline my head towards the hololith. ‘May I?’

‘Indeed,’ Gravon nods. ‘I will have you know that I completed a full augur-sweep and oversaw the diagnostic myself.’

‘Please put the complete ship data for Yuvan Tertius fleet on screen.’

The lexicanum servitor tethered to the hololith clicks and whirs. The grainy image of Yuvan Secundus fades away, replaced with a detailed schematic of the Shield of Holvast, Grim Gauntlet and Corona. I quickly scan the data, confirming what I’ve suspected since we reached the Yuvan System and learned of its fate.

Torchos Sakal is the first to see what I see. ‘The Holvast never launched its fighters.’

‘That is correct.’

‘And torpedo tubes on the Gauntlet and Corona are still full,’ Ray’gor adds.

‘Yes.’

‘None of the vessels even launched their escape pods.’

I nod grimly. ‘The drukhari strike quick, like a blade to the heart. This fleet, this was Yuvan Tertius’ armour. Armour that was never even put on.’

The sergeant eyes me strangely. ‘What are you implying, Stormseer?’

‘That it may not matter how many ships defend Yuvan Secundus,’ I say, wishing I were wrong. ‘And that we must get there quickly.’

V

I’ve spent most of my life, in one way or another, living in boxes.

My busad in Quan Zhou was bare stone. On the floor were garut furs to sleep on, and the walls were hung with esoteric trinkets, bits of armour or weapons cherished by the tribes of the Altak. It smelled of ganok wood and torch resin, and the cold winds of Khum Karta could still find my face as I slept, exhausted after a gruelling day of training. I can scarcely remember how I lived before I was taken by the ordu, but I know I’d never slept beneath anything but open sky. The busad, while not perfect, was close enough.

But my time on Chogoris had been brief, for the appetites of Great Khan’s campaigns were fierce, even before the razing of Chogoris and the frantic conquest that followed. The zadyin arga assigned me to the Firefist Brotherhood under the wise warrior-scholar Barutai Khan. I’d been chosen to fill a place left by Yangshi, a masterful seer who’d fallen in battle. I came to find, as a strange twist of the ulzi, that Barutai found himself eternally in the shadow of his predecessor, as I did.

Our ships rode into the outer darkness, ranging farther and faster as we fought the hordes of Chaos beside Guilliman and his vat-born warriors. My busad aboard the Windchaser had boasted a collection of arcane totems and ancient tomes I’d acquired, as the years became decades and the decades became centuries. A jug of chinyua had stood beside goblets on a table made from polished bone. Ganok wood incense burned whenever I dwelled within it, and I could close my eyes and imagine Chogoris.

My chambers aboard the Righteous Contempt, however, feel utterly alien to me.

The grim room is a flavourless prison of riveted iron, smelling of nothing but old metal and astringents. Morose crenellations, of a style I’ve heard called ‘gothic’, encrust the walls with lines of human skulls, leering spitefully at me as though I’ve committed some trespass against the Jazag. Even the bed resembles a mortuary slab.

A knock at the door interrupts my pessimistic rumination.

‘Come,’ I say, already knowing who it is even without the Arts.

‘Greetings, Brother Tetsugei.’ Arkamedies nods as he enters the room, folding his servo-arms around himself to fit through.

‘To you as well, Brother Arkamedies.’ I motion to an iron chair beside my still-unused bed.

He sits graciously and we lapse into silence. It is not unpleasant. If not for the stale smells of my room I could close my eyes and actually imagine myself sitting with a brother of the ordu. It feels good. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed it.

‘Lorak Pentox served the Emperor for one hundred and seventy-six years, Terran standard,’ the Ultramarine says, breaking the companionable silence. ‘Did you know that?’

‘I did not,’ I reply flatly.

‘Much of his service was spent within the Ordo Xenos. I fought beside him during the razing of Kelax, and against the genestealer uprisings in the Ulst System. He served under Sergeant Beymund six times over the course of three Vigils with the Deathwatch.’

‘He sounds like a mighty warrior,’ I reply finally, not knowing what else to say. ‘I wish I had words for him.’

Arkamedies puts a hand on my pauldron. ‘But you didn’t know him. This is why no words come to you, Tetsugei.’

It takes me a moment to realise the Ultramarine isn’t accusing me; he’s attempting to comfort me.

Arkamedies reclines as much as his servo-harness allows. He is trying to look relaxed. ‘I’ve fought beside the Black Templars on two occasions before my Vigil, and served twice under Beymund since. They are peerless warriors, and their devotion to the Emperor is absolute, but they are not prone to camaraderie. I do not believe Beymund is close with anyone, but I believe Pentox was as close to a friend as he had.’

I can only hang my head. ‘Then I am all the more sorry that he died while I was present.’

‘Give him time, White Scar,’ Arkamedies says reassuringly. ‘The sergeant mourns in his own way.’

I cannot help but chuckle. It sounds unpleasantly like one of Kordred’s humourless sneers. When did I become so bleak?

‘I am zadyin arga. I do not think any amount of time will be enough for us to become friends.’

‘I never said he’d like you,’ Arkamedies corrects with the slightest hint of a smile tugging at his mouth. ‘But in time he will come to respect you, and your gifts.’

I clap the Ultramarine on the pauldron. I wish I had some chinyua to offer him. I wonder if I’ll ever taste it again.

‘I admire your hope, brother.’

‘My gene-father, dead to us for millennia, walks once more,’ the Ultramarine says as his eyes gaze into the distance. ‘How can I have not hope, even in the darkness of these evil days?’

‘I am glad for you, and your Chapter. Genuinely.’ I nod.

He nods in return. ‘I pray someday you will know that same hope, White Scar.’

I smile. It’s not a smile of joy or optimism, but a bad facsimile of an expression I wish I still remembered how to make.

My eyes fall. I feel a hand on my shoulder. Arkamedies stares hard into my eyes. ‘Tetsugei. It can happen.’

And this time I do feel the hint of a smile touch my lips. It feels good, like the first ride across Plain Zhou after a long period penned up in a spaceship.

‘Thank you, my brother,’ I nod graciously. ‘Whatever happens on this hunt, you will always be a friend of Tetsugei of Chogoris.’

But instead of Arkamedies smiling back, I see the Ultramarine’s face crease in a concerned frown.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘Brother,’ he says warily, ‘your nose is bleeding.’

Then the klaxons sound.

VI

‘Kill-Team Beymund… to the bridge! I… repeat… Kill-Team Beymund, to the bridge!’

Arkamedies and I bolt through the halls and tunnels of the Righteous Contempt. Sirens wail in our ears. The ground trembles beneath our steps. Emergency lights, calling armsmen and crew to battle stations, paint the corridors the red of fresh vitae.

But there are no crew members responding. We see no one anywhere as we sprint towards the bridge.

Vrohn’s agonised howl drowns the vox in static. ‘Blood of the All-Father… does anyone else feel that?’

‘Aye,’ someone grunts. Kordred, maybe. ‘By the… Emperor… what is that?’

I hear Dorthos say, ‘Running… analysis now,’ through gritted teeth.

My blood thunders in my ears, sending daggers of throbbing pain into my eyes. The sensation of broken glass ripping through my veins leaves my breathing ragged. My armour’s auto-medicae screams alerts at me in Khorchin, telling me I’ve sustained fatal wounds to everywhere at once. When I squeeze my eyes shut against the suffering I see every battle-brother I’ve ever watched die, all at once. Acrid bile builds at the back of my throat.

‘Is this… what you felt… the “echo”?’ Arkamedies wheezes beside me, his teeth clenched in agony.

‘Yes. This is worse.’

I finally relent and activate my medicae. Macronarcotics inject deep into my muscles via the hard-ports embedded in my flesh. The pain subsides to a nagging background ache, like I’ve spent ten hours in the duelling cages. It does nothing for the images that haunt me whenever I blink.

Arkamedies and I are the first to the bridge, finding the adamantium blast doors wide open. Even before I breach the threshold I know what I’m going to find.

The bridge is a scene of total chaos. Every single crew member is on the deck writhing in agony, frantically clawing, mouths contorted in shrieks of animal pain that cease only to draw another breath. Over the screaming I can hear the sound of tendons ripping and bones cracking as their bodies thrash and contort, seeking escape. The stench of fresh blood, voided bowels and terror-sweat saturates the room. Only the servitors remain unaffected, dutifully sitting at their consoles awaiting input that will never come.

I am Adeptus Astartes. My mortal flesh was forged by the gene-seed of Jaghatai Khan, the Warhawk, son of the Emperor. A fragment of the Master of Mankind dwells within my blood, forever setting me apart from humankind. And despite my invulnerability, my transhuman resilience, I can barely remain standing.

I cannot imagine what these poor souls are enduring.

I gingerly work my way across the bridge, picking over squealing bodies, having no way to help them. I come to the command throne, to Captain Gravon. The old man is slumped forward, mouth gaping, body spasming. I lift him upright.

His face is a bloody ruin, eyes ripped from his skull.

‘Captain!’ I shout in his face, trying to break him from his horror. ‘Captain Gravon!’

Nothing but a stream of desperate, mewling gibberish spills from his bloody lips as he frantically claws his face down to the bone.

Sergeant Beymund charges onto the bridge, followed by the rest of the kill-team. ‘Arkamedies! What in the Emperor’s name is going on?’

‘I don’t know!’ he shouts back over the klaxons and screaming. ‘Tetsugei knows!’

The Black Templar glares at me across the bridge. ‘This is what happened on Yuvan Tertius!’ I bellow over the cacophony.

‘Someone turn that damned alarm off!’ Vrohn howls.

Arkamedies turns to a data-terminal, gingerly hauls the shrieking crewman aside and connects to the console via his mechadendrites. His human eye glazes as he interfaces with the Contempt’s machine-spirit. The klaxons fall silent, which only emphasises the sound of human misery.

‘Dorthos, can you do anything for them?’ Ray’gor pleads.

The one-armed Astral Knight shakes his head. ‘This attack is psychic in nature, and the macronarcotics at my disposal are designed for Adeptus Astartes physiology. I suspect any relief I could provide would kill them almost instantly.’

The Salamander bites back a curse. ‘Tetsugei, is there anything you can do for them?’

‘There’s no time for that,’ Beymund orders, cutting him off. ‘We need to contact the other ships.’

Ray’gor ignores him. ‘Tetsugei, can you?’

‘I–’

‘There isn’t time, Ray’gor!’ the sergeant snaps, slamming his fist against Gravon’s command throne hard enough to dent the iron. ‘If it bothers you so, you may administer the Emperor’s Peace to them. Arkamedies, open a hail on the fleet-vox. We will deal with the mortals later.’

I see something pass between the Ultramarine and the Black Templar, something unspoken but poignant. I resist the impulse to pluck it from their minds, mostly because I do not wish to know it. ‘Aye, sergeant. Vox-link open.’

‘This is Sergeant Beymund,’ the Black Templar announces loudly over the screaming. ‘The Righteous Contempt is under attack by an unknown psychic weapon, possibly drukhari in origin. All mortal crew have been incapacitated. What is your status?’

The vox crackles with static as it awaits a reply. We wait. The sound of screaming lessens slightly as several of the crew die from their paroxysms, vomiting blood from ruptured lungs.

The sergeant repeats his hail, but his voice betrays what we already know. I tentatively reach out with my mind, but a pall of suffering saturates the heavens around me. It’s as though I’m searching for a single candle in a room choked by smoke.

‘I cannot sense the fleet’s astropaths,’ I admit sadly. ‘We are on our own, sergeant.’

Beymund absorbs my grim pronouncement with the speed of a veteran of the Adeptus Astartes; in a fraction of a second he’s already made up his mind. ‘Then we’ll fight and slay these vile abominations. Arkamedies, I need vision.’

The Techmarine is already working, remotely coordinating the bridge servitors to realign the Contempt’s powerful auguries and auspex-scanners. ‘It’s the same as what the Yuvan Tertius fleet captured,’ he says as the imaging resolves on the hololith. The grainy auspex-return displays a massive blank mass, somehow impervious to all but the Contempt’s limited short-range scanners.

‘Do we have weapons control?’ Kordred asks.

Torchos Sakal snarls. ‘That cloaking field is the size of a hive city – we could empty all of the Contempt’s ordnance and have no guarantee of hitting anything.’

I feel an icy prickling beneath the dull ache hammering at my temples. Somewhere within the acidic darkness I sense… something. Darker than shadow. Blacker than night.

‘Arkamedies,’ I say slowly. ‘Bring up the starboard pict-feed.’

Battle schemata and silenced alarms vanish from the screen dominating the bridge, replaced with a field of stars. To the right and left, the escort vessels Xenobane, Emperor’s Justice, Demolisher and Warbringer roll in the void, incapacitated but for whatever nascent tasks their servitors are performing.

‘What am I looking at, Stormseer?’ Beymund asks.

I don’t answer the sergeant. My eyes are searching the stars, hunting, like a berkut seeking prey among the Altak grass. And then I see it, a slight ripple in the sea of stars, subtly distorting them like a piece of glass.

‘Fire a broadside towards quadrant twenty-zero-four.’

‘Belay that order,’ the sergeant snaps. ‘Explain yourself.’

I turn and stare into the Black Templar’s flinty, scarred face. ‘I ask you to trust me.’

Long, painful seconds pass by. I fight the urge to probe the sergeant’s mind, to read his thoughts. On Chogoris we treat trust as we treat names: one must give first what one asks to receive.

‘Do it,’ Beymund snaps finally.

The Ultramarine enters input into the console. Kill-Team Beymund braces with boots mag-locked to the deck. A throaty whine builds to a guttural detonation that reverberates through the Righteous Contempt as the vessel’s macro cannons unleash a devastating fusillade.

I focus on the oculus to the exclusion of all else, even the prickling sensation of the sergeant glaring at my back.

A massive explosion blossoms in the blackness of space.

‘Direct hit,’ Arkamedies announces.

Kordred laughs. Set against the tapestry of mortals noisily screaming themselves to death, it’s doubly grating.

‘What are the odds of randomly hitting a ship in a blank target of that size?’ Dorthos asks, seemingly to himself.

Vrohn growls, but I can hear a smile cracking his voice. ‘Looks like the maleficarum is good for something after all.’

Distantly I am aware of their praise. Although I consider myself to be above such things, I’d be committing falsehood if I said I didn’t appreciate it. But I say nothing and feel no satisfaction. I stare at the oculus, praying I am wrong.

Only Sergeant Beymund understands my hesitancy before its source is revealed.

The space around the impact ripples and squirms, then peels back, revealing sinister crimson metal beneath. The cloaking field recedes, and recedes…

‘Impossible.’

And recedes, and recedes, and recedes.

I feel my breath catch in my throat. I can recall only two other occasions when I’ve felt the ashamedly mortal sensation. The first was after the battle that earned the attention of the ordu. I’d been thirteen years old Terran standard, covered in the blood of enemy clansmen, bleeding from half a dozen wounds myself, standing before a towering giant sheathed in bone-white metal. The second came a century later, when I’d stood on the bastions of Khum Karta, watching the sapphire skies of Chogoris stained crimson with the corruption of the Red Corsairs.

It catches now as the fiendish xenos cloaking field vanishes, revealing the drukhari vessel that scoured Yuvan Tertius.

‘It’s not a fleet,’ I say aloud. ‘It’s a single ship.’

‘By the All-Father,’ Vrohn breathes.

Arkamedies is already running diagnostic scans, as though the image we can see with our eyes can be disproven by sensorium data. ‘It can’t be.’

But it can, because it is; lurking before us is a drukhari warship the size of a hive city.

The moment of awe is shattered as a servitor opens its clattering mandible and calmly announces, ‘Target lock.’

Fresh klaxons burst throughout the bridge.

‘Arkamedies, shut it off!’ Beymund roars.

The alarms squeal out the last of their warning and fade into silence. The screams of the dying bridge crew grow quieter. Some have perished from the trauma wracking their bodies. Some have lapsed into a fugue stupor, lying shuddering and contorted on the deck. Some have clearly ruptured their vocal cords and are only capable of wheezing through their blood-flecked mouths as they thrash like blind animals.

A great many still scream on. The Salamander kneels next to them, mercifully delivering the Emperor’s Peace with his combat knife. I expect that, had I not been an Astartes who’d born witness to the worst horrors of the galaxy for one hundred and sixty-seven years, I would have found the sound unbearable.

‘Initiate evasive manoeuvres!’ Beymund commands. ‘Burn to starboard and redirect void shields to port!’

‘Aye, sergeant, initiating now.’

The Righteous Contempt shudders as its engines explode to life, hurtling the ship forward. It’s sluggish by comparison to what I’m accustomed to, but it’s better than sitting still.

‘Sergeant, what are your orders?’ Torchos Sakal asks. I can feel the barely restrained ire radiating from him as he fingers the activation rune of his chainsword. I’ve come to find that all Adeptus Astartes inherently despise the helplessness of void combat, but some suffer it with more grace than others.

‘We need to deliver a warning to Yuvan Secundus,’ Arkamedies interjects. ‘That must be our primary objective, Beymund.’

The Righteous Contempt shakes as a missile smashes into its flank. Sparks burst from ruptured consoles. Arkamedies, interfaced directly with the vessel’s machine-spirit, winces in empathic pain. ‘Sector two port void shield at twelve per cent,’ a servitor announces.

Kordred laughs bitterly and gestures to Mistress Olema’s choir-chamber. ‘Our astropaths aren’t going to be sending messages anytime soon. By the time a long-range vox-transmission reaches anyone, Yuvan Secundus will be long dead.’

‘Can we warp jump out of range of this damned drukhari ship?’ Dorthos asks. He turns to me. ‘Tetsugei, you understand what this weapon is better than any of us. Do you believe it has an effective range?’

‘Report. Xenobane has suffered a critical wound to its drive-cluster,’ another servitor announces with a drooling click. The hololith fizzles angrily as the Cobra-class destroyer’s drive signature vanishes, displaying only static. The auspex identifies swarms of smaller drukhari vessels streaming from the hulk towards the crippled Xenobane.

Boarding craft.

‘I do not know,’ I admit bitterly. I think about the psychic residue lingering in Anvam, how raw it felt. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’

‘Regardless, we’re not diving into the warp. Not without a Navigator,’ Beymund snaps.

‘So we can’t send a message, we can’t retreat, and fighting a vessel of this size is impossible,’ Ray’gor says. ‘What, then, would you have us do, sergeant?’

‘We take the fight to them,’ I say, mostly to myself.

Vrohn glances incredulously over at me. ‘The Contempt against a ship of that size?’

My brow hardens at his flippant analysis. I feel the internal struggle I often do when no good strategy presents itself, a struggle between the gene-forged warrior of the Adeptus Astartes and a battle-hungry tribesman of the Altak. My hand tightens around my force staff, squeezing the psychoactive wood.

‘The Salamander speaks true. We cannot contact Yuvan Secundus, and we likely cannot outrun this vessel,’ I say, acutely aware of the eyes of the kill-team on me. ‘We have no choice but to fight this ship. Hold it. Right here.’

The Space Wolf regards me strangely for a moment, his half-burned face unreadable. Then he shrugs to the clatter of talismans and wolf fangs. ‘At the very least, if we survive, I’ll finally get to give Hrelka something to drink.’

‘The Codex does not support such a strategy,’ Arkamedies says with raised eyebrow, gesturing to the massive spiked monstrosity filling the oculus like a gargantuan ocean predator. ‘For obvious reasons.’

Kordred makes a gear-grinding sound. I look over at him. His face is twisted in a humourless scowl. ‘That ship is bigger than the Victus. It’s bigger than the damned Phalanx,’ the Minotaur growls. ‘It would take the mustering of a Chapter fleet to destroy it, at least.’

A massive explosion shakes the Contempt to its superstructure. The groan of twisting metal follows the distant shout of ship-killing ordnance striking our ship.

‘Warbringer is hit!’ Arkamedies shouts, moments before the servitors declare it with the urgency of announcing one’s breakfast.

‘So we board it,’ I shoot back at Kordred. ‘Use the Contempt as a boarding torpedo.’

‘Brother Vrohn’s point still stands,’ Arkamedies shouts over the bang of our port void shields blowing out. ‘Even if we can breach their shields and armour, we’re outnumbered. Potentially tens of thousands to one.’

The Astral Knight hangs his head. He pulls his strange crystalline sword from its scabbard and stares at it. I do not probe his thoughts but I can feel a great sorrow emanating from him. ‘We have triumphed against worse.’

Beymund slams his fist once more against the captain’s throne. ‘Damnation! We are the Angels of Death, warriors of the Ordo Xenos! We are the bane of the xenos, and the doom of the Emperor’s foes!’ he roars. ‘These soulless abominations have dared defile His realm with their blasphemous presence, and for that He demands nothing short of their utter extermination!’

‘Sergeant?’

There is a long moment of silence, punctuated by the urgent bangs of drukhari boarding craft fastening themselves to the Contempt. Servitors announce the crippling of the Demolisher. The animal moaning of those poor souls who haven’t yet lapsed into a fugue state drones on. I tear my eyes from the oculus. Beymund is staring hard at me. There is anger smouldering in his eyes, but there’s something else.

In a moment I recognise it: he’s asking me a question.

‘Drukhari prioritise speed,’ I say. ‘Their holofields are weaker against energy weapons, but their armour… They call it wraithbone, and it cracks under hard ammunition.’

The Black Templar says nothing but nods tersely to me.

‘Bring the Contempt on a collision bearing,’ Beymund commands, clutching the bolt pistol chained to his arm. ‘Reroute all void shields to the fore quadrants, and ready the lance arrays to fire straight ahead.’

‘Dump the plasma core’s reserves into the engines,’ I add quickly. The Righteous Contempt isn’t a ship of the ordu, but with some coaxing it might be able to fly like one in its final moments.

Warily Beymund looks to Arkamedies. I hear the engine signature change timbre as we lurch forwards, rumbling throatily. A high-pitched whine blossoms around us as the vessel’s superstructure torques with the spin.

‘Burn complete, shields rerouted, setting guidance to autopilot. Lance arrays and macro cannons are aligned and slaved to firing solution,’ the Techmarine announces as he disconnects himself from the console. ‘Our lives are in the Emperor’s hands now.’

Kordred takes a knee, bracing himself between two consoles. ‘Not how I’d pictured dying,’ he grouses.

‘I never pictured myself dying at all,’ Vrohn says as he likewise wedges himself into cover. ‘Didn’t think there was anything in this forsaken galaxy strong enough to kill me.’

As one we make the sign of the aquila, don our helmets and bow our heads. I let myself breathe a sigh of submission as I brace myself for impact: I’ve done what is within my power and surrendered my will to the Emperor.

Beymund, for his part, looks oddly at peace.

‘Holy Emperor, enthroned on Terra, look upon Your servants,’ he intones. ‘Fill our hearts with Your holy rage, that the attacks of the enemy might melt before our ire. Fill our arms with Your strength, that we may smite these contemptible foes from Your sight. Fill our souls with Your steadfast vigilance, that no force that assails us may turn us from Your righteous purpose.’

The Black Templar pauses. I hear him whisper something to himself, a private prayer, something I’d have to probe his mind to know.

But as he does I feel warmth burbling in my chest, growing hotter with the beating of my hearts. It works its way down to the tips of my fingers, up my neck into the muscles of my jaw, tugging at the corners of my mouth. I’m the equivalent of an Altak rider armed with a tulwar charging the immortal fastness of Khum Karta, and yet, for the first time since I watched my home world burn, I feel my face split in a Chogorian grin. I know that I’m racing towards my death, but by the Altak, it feels good to be fighting like a White Scar.

‘Ave Imperator!’ Beymund shouts.

Before my war cry can leave my throat, the Gladius-class frigate Righteous Contempt hammers into the drukhari behemoth. My world disappears in fire and noise and pain.

VII

Tink-tink. Tink.

My eyes open and I freeze. My breath stills in my lungs. My fists relax in their gauntlets. The instinctual tics of waking are instantly smothered like a doused flame.

I lie, unmoving, while a loathsome xenos creature, face hidden behind an iron helm, jabs at my helm’s eye-lenses with a serrated bayonet.

Tink. Tink-tink.

The sickly creature looks up from my prone form and utters something in its grotesque, sibilant tongue. I remain perfectly motionless as three more of the hunched figures slink from my periphery. My lip curls in silent disgust as I take in their sutured, infected skin, their wholly wrong propositions, and their hideously warped spines.

Drukhari.

I lie, waiting, while they converse back and forth, gesturing flamboyantly around themselves. I lie, waiting, as their eyes turn away from me, a poor corpse. I lie, waiting, until the barrels of their lethal rifles drift infinitesimally away from my face.

And then I strike.

I’m on my feet faster than the human eye can blink, faster than even these agile xenos can react. I hammer my fist through the first one’s chest, crumpling its torso with a wet crunch. Before the second can raise its rifle I’ve lunged forward and torn its head from its shoulders. The third one fires its weapon. I feel pain, but I’ve suffered enough injuries to know it isn’t a fatal wound. The xenos squeals and squirms as I grab it. I lift it over my head, and unleashing the power of my mind, pour the fury of the Altak into its body until it bursts into gory hunks of viscera.

The fourth drukhari trains its lethal rifle on my head as I shake the remains of its kin from my hands. Even if I had my staff, I don’t think I’d be fast enough.

An axe descends from behind it, hewing it from collar to hip in a welter of dark xenos gore. Vrohn kicks the twitching corpse to the ground with a growl and crushes its helmed head beneath his boot.

The Space Wolf grins toothily, bestial face slathered in transhuman blood. ‘It’s true what they say about you Chogorians – you are quicker than you look.’

I think of something to say but pain bites it off in my mouth. My armour’s medicae is already assessing my wound and routing diagnostics to my visor. Apparently the esoteric energy beam has vaporised my left kidney and a portion of my lower intestine. More macronarcotics flood into my system as Larraman cells staunch the spurting wound. Sealant gel burgeons into the gap in my mesh-weave and hardens to fill it.

Not the worst injury I’ve suffered and lived through.

Death averted, I finally, truly open my eyes and survey my surroundings. I’ve ridden to the darkest corners of the galaxy and hunted monsters forged from the oldest of men’s nightmares. Looking at the scene before me, this spectacle rivals anything I’ve seen.

The bridge of the Contempt is a crumpled, jagged wreck wreathed in flames. The corpses of the doomed mortal crew are splattered across every surface, dripping from the walls and ceiling in wet glops. The scalding reek of burning corpses, burning oil and scorched metal saturate the air. An insidious, pervasive aura of dread clings to the destruction, more painful than any wound, more heart-breaking than any tragedy.

The vox suddenly crackles with static. ‘Kill-team… report.’

Arkamedies. Thank the Emperor.

I retrieve my staff from across the twisted wreckage. ‘Tetsugei is here.’

‘Aye, I’m alive, despite the maleficarum’s best efforts,’ Vrohn growls to the vox, joining me. ‘Where are you?’

Across the debris a huge plate of iron stirs and is hauled aside by two massive servo-arms. Sparks gout from his bionics, but he seems uninjured. ‘Well met, brothers,’ the Ultramarine grunts.

‘Dorthos reporting,’ the Astral Knight calls out. His vox signal is garbled. ‘I’m with Torchos Sakal. He’s injured.’

‘I’m fine,’ the Flesh Tearer grunts over the vox, his voice pained.

‘You have a shard of metal lodged in your stomach, you stubborn bastard,’ Dorthos growls. ‘I see you, Vrohn. I’m down here with Kordred and Ray’gor.’

We work our way towards a collapsed portion of decking. The corpses of several masked drukhari lie at the kill-team members’ feet in various degrees of dismemberment and incineration. We help the Minotaur and the Salamander pull themselves from the wreckage, and Vrohn and Ray’gor clasp wrists in the warrior’s grip. Kordred regards me and inclines his head in thanks.

‘Where’s Beymund?’ Arkamedies says.

‘He isn’t with you?’ Dorthos asks.

We look around the flaming, gore-splattered rubble. I feel a familiar yet strangely human sense of foreboding.

‘Sergeant, report,’ Arkamedies calls into the vox-net.

Silence hisses across the vox.

‘Beymund, report!’

‘Is he…?’ the Salamander probes.

Dorthos taps at his Apothecary gauntlet. ‘His vitals are weak, but he’s alive.’

The Techmarine boosts the vox signal. The channel floods with angry static. ‘Beymund, re–’

‘I’m… trapped.’

‘Sergeant, where are you?’ Arkamedies cries out.

The Black Templar coughs wetly through the vox. ‘I’m trapped… under something,’ he whispers slowly. ‘I can’t… I can’t move it.’

‘Arkamedies,’ Dorthos says quickly, ‘do you have him on auspex?’

‘Negative,’ the Ultramarine replies. ‘His armour is heavily damaged.’

‘Meaning?’

He shakes his head. ‘The signal is too weak for a lock.’

I close my eyes. The iron shields around my mind drop ever so slightly. The venom of this hellish place pours in like rancid smoke, but I’ve walked the Path of Heaven and can still pierce the gloom. I glimpse an ember of bitterness and rage. The mind seemingly recoils at my gaze.

‘Get out… of my head…’ crackles weakly across the vox.

‘He’s this way,’ I announce, pointing across the devastation of the bridge.

We fall into a cautious defensive ring and quickly pick our way through the wreckage, keeping a watchful eye for drukhari.

‘Beymund, we’re coming, but we don’t have visual contact,’ Arkamedies calls over the vox. ‘Say something.’

‘Can’t…’

‘His lungs are ruptured,’ Dorthos confirms. ‘Bleeding out fast.’

‘He’s under there somewhere,’ I announce, pointing to a massive heap of collapsed metal.

‘Well, don’t just stand there, damn you!’ Vrohn yells as he rapidly tears away burning debris. We split up and quickly begin hauling away the wreckage.

‘His vitals are fading,’ Dorthos announces. His voice is flat, measured. Composed.

‘We’re coming, brother!’ Arkamedies calls out, hurling massive slabs of metal away with his servo-arms. I lift a piece of buckled iron. There, caked in blood and dust, lies Sergeant Beymund.

‘Here!’ I call out. ‘Dorthos, he is here!’

Beymund gasps. ‘I can’t breathe. Get my helmet… off…’

I carefully lift away his crumpled helm and set it aside. The Black Templar’s face is splattered with blood, leaking from his mouth and nose and ears. Although his jaw is clenched in defiant rage I can see the agony in his blue eyes.

‘Stormseer…’ he wheezes.

By now the rest of the kill-team is at my side. Even without looking at their faces I know their expressions match mine.

The sergeant’s body is utterly crushed from the waist down. One arm is all but torn from its socket, oozing blood from beneath a crumpled pauldron. A twisted spar of metal juts from his cracked plastron.

‘Dorthos…’ Beymund gasps. ‘Ca… can…’

The Apothecary’s face is hard, genforged into something harder, like the rest of us, yet I still see the shadow of sadness in his eyes. I’ve never envied the emchi their role; being immersed in the dead and dying of one’s own brotherhood is a cruel fate.

‘Save your strength, brother,’ Dorthos orders firmly before turning to us. ‘If we can cut him free and get him to the apothecarion, and it’s still functional, I mi–’

Beymund waves weakly with his remaining hand, still chained to his bolt pistol, and coughs up more blood. ‘No… There is… no time.’

‘But I might be–’

‘No,’ the sergeant says as firmly as a dying Adeptus Astartes warrior can. I haven’t known Beymund long, but I already know him well enough to recognise when an argument with him is over.

I look to Dorthos, then to each of the kill-team, willing someone to dispute the unspoken sentiment behind the dying Black Templar’s words. Not even Arkamedies has any hope to offer. I don’t know why I expected it. I’ve seen enough ordu brothers die to recognise a fatal wound.

The Astral Knight kneels beside Beymund. The rest of the kill-team join him, placing their gauntlets on his pauldrons. Vrohn chants something in Fenrisian. Torchos Sakal says a prayer to the Emperor. Ray’gor intones something from the Promethean Cult.

And I stand, unsure how to comfort this noble warrior in his final moments, because I don’t know him, don’t know his customs, his prayers, his ways. Never before in my life have I ever felt so inadequate.

‘Shall I administer the Emperor’s Peace?’ Dorthos asks finally.

The sergeant’s gaze, still dauntless, catches my eye. ‘I put my trust in you… Stormseer,’ Beymund wheezes. ‘And am dead… for it.’

‘I am… sorry,’ I finally say, knowing no other words. If I could have taken his place I would have.

‘Don’t apologise… to me…’ Beymund rasps. ‘The Emperor… the Emperor will judge you… the Emperor will judge you all… by the xenos your blades leave slain…’

The kill-team nods as one, having received its leader’s final command. Our Apothecary positions his narthecium over the sergeant’s remaining heart. ‘Rest well, Champion of Haelex,’ he says.

Vrohn snorts gruffly. ‘To the Underland with rest. Sharpen your blade at the All-Father’s side, you hard old bastard. The Wolftime will be upon us soon.’

I see the smallest ghost of a smile touch the sergeant’s scarred lips.

Whhrzzz-snap.

The narthecium’s reductor spike retracts with a wet clank. Sergeant Beymund of the Black Templars closes his eyes for the last time.

‘I’ll need a moment to harvest his progenoids,’ Dorthos announces grimly.

As one the kill-team looks towards Arkamedies. I may not fully understand the unofficial hierarchy of the Deathwatch, but I’ve lived centuries in a brotherhood of noble warriors and understand the unspoken agreement passing between these battle-brothers.

The Ultramarine nods. ‘Vrohn, Torchos Sakal, Ray’gor and Kordred – perimeter defence while Dorthos works.’

‘You’re wasting your time harvesting those,’ Kordred scoffs. ‘None of us are leaving this place alive.’

The Astral Knight doesn’t look up from his grisly work. ‘You’d want me to if it were you, Minotaur.’

‘I’d tell you to leave me,’ Kordred snaps with more venom than I’ve heard from him. I sense the cracks in his callous aura like an odour I smell without inhaling. He hides his grief well, but not well enough to fool a zadyin arga. I wonder what the Black Templar was to him. ‘By the time this mission is done, I likely will,’ he adds before stomping off.

Arkamedies watches him go for a moment, looking as though he’ll say something to the Minotaur. But he doesn’t.

VIII

We emerge from the shattered remains of the Righteous Contempt, trading one hell for a worse one.

The flaming wreckage of our vessel gives way to a hideous, biomechanical amalgamation of barbed crenellations and laboratorial horrors. Gurgling tubing runs like a monstrous capillary system through tunnel after darksome tunnel, funnelling unspeakable excretions to places echoing with screams. A greasy film, stinking of rotted blood and ozone, clings languidly to every blackened surface. Filth-encrusted sluice-grates slurp up the detritus. The humid air is cold, saturated with the reek of alchemic compounds and bodily fluids.

The haunting, inescapable aura of suffering that assaulted us before permeates every iota of this evil place. Every step sends dagger-like pain shooting through our feet. Every breath feels like swallowing a razor blade. Defying all logic, our power armour offers no protection against it.

Dorthos hastily reconfigures our medicae systems to ration our macronarcotics and life support systems; we have no way of telling how long our supplies will have to last, and aboard this cursed vessel the raw agony is strong enough to incapacitate even a Space Marine. Ray’gor leads us in a steady mantra of prayer to the Emperor to armour our souls. It is like a single drop of water on a man set aflame.

And still we endure, step by step, mile by mile, as we journey deeper and deeper into the drukhari labyrinth, because the only other option is to accept defeat.

Kill-Team Beymund, now Kill-Team Arkamedies, moves quickly, silently – we are rodents hiding in the grass of the Altak beneath a sky choked with berkuts. We pass patrols and hunting parties, gaggles of patchwork horrors with weaponry erupting from their skin, and one by one we silence them with combat knives and pulverising blows. As a warrior most at home when mounted on an assault bike, racing with staff blazing and pistol screaming into the enemy lines, such skulduggery suits me poorly.

Still, I suffer the imposition of stealth better than some.

‘What are we looking for?’ Vrohn whispers, for perhaps the third or fourth time since we left the Contempt.

The Techmarine blink-pushes an updated diagnostic to us, the tentative result of the ad hoc augur-mapping he’s conducted since our insertion.

‘Regardless of this vessel’s size and xenos design, it still must obey basic laws of shipcraft. It is capable of thrust, surrounded by a holoshield, and armed with weapons systems capable of devastating capital ships, including the pain-aura. All of these require an immense amount of energy, ergo it possesses the xenos approximation of a generatorium. The tactical acumen displayed in the assault of Yuvan Tertius and the subsequent destruction of our fleet reveals a cunning leadership presence, ergo it has a commander, and likely a bridge,’ Arkamedies explains, himself sounding wearied. ‘The Codex decrees we neutralise whichever we encounter first.’

‘Aye.’ Vrohn nods pensively. His burn-scarred face shows little expression. ‘So what are we looking for, exactly?’

Arkamedies looks to me for an answer.

‘We will know it when we see it,’ I respond, having no better answer to give.

The Space Wolf grumbles something about his frost axe but drops the point, at least until his impatience overwhelms him once more. I do not begrudge the Fenrisian his exasperation, nor any of us; I too wish I knew where I was going.

‘White Scar, you have fought these xenos before,’ Ray’gor says. ‘Have you ever seen inside their vessels?’

‘Yes,’ I grunt out between painful steps. ‘Once. Boarding action.’

‘Does this align with any pattern of vessel you’ve seen before?’ Dorthos asks.

I recall the battle, relive it briefly. I’m fighting beside Barutai and my Firefist brothers, wreathed in lightning, surrounded by roaring storm winds and the howling of chainswords. Lithe xenos attempt to stymie us at every redoubt and pin us down with heavy weapons in every yawning chamber. We sweep through them in a storm of blades, quicker than lightning, faster than the Altak winds. Some of us even laugh as we kill. It feels good to remember what it was like to laugh.

But this place is different. Something about the arrangement of its tunnels, the presence of gushing sluice canals beneath our feet… it seems subtly wrong, something far more intrinsic than the sickening xenos geometry and hateful tech-sorcery. It doesn’t seem to have been built like a ship at all.

‘No,’ I reply after much consideration. ‘It does not.’

We come to another fork in our path, two equally loathsome tunnels leading to equally forsaken places.

Arkamedies puts his hand on my pauldron. ‘Which way, brother?’

I suck several painful breaths through my clenched teeth, squeeze my eyes shut, and again open my mind just enough to scent my prey. Like a blind man searching for a flame by heat alone, I guide us by the agony I feel stabbing behind my eyes. It’s difficult, and not just because of the wearying pain. This close to the proverbial fire it is nigh impossible to discern where it burns hottest. But there, I see a corona of mortal suffering, the cacophony that birthed the echo, darker than darkness.

The plunge into the heavens lasts no more than a few seconds before I slam shut the gates, but the exposure to the hideousness of this place leaves me feeling physically weak, a sensation as foreign to me as living in a box.

‘This way,’ I gasp, pointing to the right. ‘We are close.’

‘How close is close?’ Vrohn says hungrily. Whether from pain or a thirst for vengeance he’s been noisily strangling the leather-wrapped haft of Hrelka for over an hour.

‘Clo–’ I say. The ground lurches beneath me as a bolt of agony lances into the meat of my mind. I lean on my staff to steady myself. I sense something, the malice-canker at the epicentre of the pain-fire, turning its gaze to me. I taste acrid bile.

When my eyes open I see the rest of the kill-team staring at me. Those whose faces aren’t hidden behind helms show deep concern.

Dorthos comes to my side. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I am fine,’ I hiss as I fight down the gorge rising in my throat.

‘Your brain is displaying severe symptoms of neural trauma,’ the Apothecary says. His every word thunders like a hammer blow against my skull. ‘Psyker neurophysiology is not my area of specialisation, but I would encourage you not to do again whatever you just did.’

‘I am fine,’ I repeat. Breath by breath my vision melts back into focus.

‘I can reconfigure your auto-medicae to–’

‘I said I am fine!’ I roar. I hear my words echo unnaturally, booming down corridors like thunder. I suck in another deep breath. The acidic fire building in my chest abates ever so slightly to a dull ache. ‘I am sorry, brother. I… I have to. It is the only way.’

The Astral Knight’s face is unreadable behind his helm, but after a moment he nods and continues past me. The rest of the kill-team follows suit.

The vox clicks softly in my ear. To my surprise I hear the gruff voice of Torchos Sakal. ‘I am no psyker, but there are many within the Chapter who bear our primarch’s gift. I know you are hurting, brother.’

‘It is not that,’ I lie. ‘Beymund spoke truly – I have much to atone for.’

Torchos Sakal’s scarred face splits in a tentative smile. ‘Our life on the battlefield is one endless act of atonement.’

‘I… thank you. Brother.’

‘Let us help you, White Scar,’ the Flesh Tearer replies. ‘I believe you are our best chance at bringing the Emperor’s divine wrath upon these abominations.’

‘There’s a chamber up ahead,’ Kordred grates over the vox. I hear the ever-present sound of human screaming grow subtly louder, and louder, and louder.

I nod, feeling a leaden weight settle in the pit of my stomach. ‘We are here.’

Kill-Team Arkamedies slowly crosses the threshold, emerging from a claustrophobic tunnel into a chamber whose vastness defies description.

‘Emperor protect us,’ the Salamander whispers.

‘What… in the name of the Emperor are we looking at?’ Kordred grates.

I feel anger, hot, aching to be released. ‘I believe we have found the heart.’

The chamber is enormous. Beyond enormous. It dwarfs the vaulted feasting halls of Khum Karta as a warrior of the ordu towers over a man. It stretches so far into the distance that my eyes cannot see its end, and reaches so high above that its upper reaches are lost in the alchemical fog.

And the walls are lined with screaming humans.

Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of them hang suspended in hideous xenos torture-cradles like the one in Anvam Command, choked by gurgling pipes, writhing machinery and fiendish pain-apparatus.

But no. Not thousands upon thousands. Millions. Millions upon millions.

We’ve found the inhabitants of Yuvan Tertius.

Kordred draws close to one of the cradles. The poor wretch within is a male, approximately of middle age, yet his form is an emaciated wreck, as though all of his muscle and fat has been rendered down while he still lives. The hideous tubing threading through the walls and sluice-grates permeates his flesh as well, snaking into his bowels, up through his lungs, into his brain, and branching into every other orifice. His face is one of animal panic, the kind of agony that comes from suffering a mortal wound over and over, and surviving it.

‘I’ve fought the slaves of the Dark Gods, I’ve seen the cruelty they inflict on friend and foe first-hand,’ the Minotaur says. ‘But this…’

I feel acid building in my mouth at the sight of such wanton debauchery, such wholesale viciousness. ‘The drukhari drink suffering as we drink air. I too have fought the servants of Chaos. They inflict pain to please their gods. The drukhari inflict pain to please themselves.’

Arkamedies runs an auspex scan from his gauntlet. ‘This chamber is massive, but even it cannot account for the sheer bulk of the vessel we saw from the Contempt.’

‘No,’ I say grimly. ‘This is one of many. The first filled. There are more, feeding a… core. I can feel it.’

‘A core?’

‘The weapon, I think,’ I say, thinking back to the dark pit I see whenever I dive into the warp. ‘Whatever projects this suffering outwardly.’

‘Greetings, mon-keigh.’

Within a fraction of a heartbeat the kill-team’s weapons are trained on the source of the utterance. After a seemingly interminable amount of time a small figure shambles from the shadows.

‘Hold your fire!’ Arkamedies hisses. ‘It’s a survivor.’

The figure is a human mortal, a male, merely a few years older than I was when I was taken by the ordu. He’s as starved as the rest, but the machinery infesting his body seems different, less haphazard in its insertion. His aura bleeds human agony, mixed with the flavour of something malignant. It’s utterly alien and instinctually repulsive.

As the human approaches, his eyes roll back in his head and his mouth ratchets open with a gristly crack. Then he bows stiffly in a way that human muscle and bone does not naturally accommodate.

‘I bid thee welcome, albeit unexpectedly, to the Sorrowcrown,’ the human announces in a strained, halting voice.

Sorrowcrown. Even hearing the abhorrent drukhari name for this ship translated into Gothic pains my ears. My jaw clenches at the thought of it translated into Khorchin.

Arkamedies steps forward. His grav-gun remains trained on the mortal’s face. I see Torchos Sakal’s finger twitch on the activation rune of his chainsword. This isn’t a man.

‘I’ll have your name now, xenogen,’ the Ultramarine says firmly. ‘So I can know what to inscribe upon the banner of victory that will hang in Macragge City to celebrate your defeat.’

The human-puppet makes a hideous choking sound. It takes me a moment to realise it’s the drukhari equivalent of amusement forced through a human tongue.

‘I suppose it is only fair since I know yours, Arkamedies of the Deathwatch,’ the puppet says, its body bending as though trying to achieve a pose human bones could never mimic. ‘Spare me your surprise. I have watched you and your soldiers through the eyes of my slaves ever since you set foot upon my vessel. My name is Zrakovius, Master of the Coven of the Nightmare Unending, true master of Commorragh.’

‘You think yourself mighty because you prey upon those who have no ability to fight back,’ Arkamedies proclaims to the intermediary. ‘But you will not find us easy prey.’

‘No, I do not expect that I will,’ Zrakovius taunts. ‘At least, not compared to the souls I have harvested from this system thus far. But have no concern, mon-keigh, for I have lived lifetimes beyond my counting, each longer than yours. You and your primitive ilk will present me no more trouble than the prey that now fuels the Sorrowcrown.’

Fuel.

I glance up at the miles upon miles of torture-cradles, each one brimming with the mortal agony of a human suffering the worst pain it has ever experienced. I remember the canker, the singularity in a black hole of pain, glaring at my intrusion.

Fuel.

Suddenly I understand. I don’t know how I hadn’t understood it before, hadn’t seen it before. I close my eyes and open my mind, focusing on the Ultramarine in front of me.

+Keep him talking.+

Arkamedies hears my voice in his skull. He hesitates only a moment.

‘Sorrowcrown. I suppose you believe this name strikes fear into our hearts?’

‘I know it does, mon-keigh.’ The puppet grins, the corners of his mouth stretching too wide. ‘I saw it first-hand when I harvested the mining colony. The way that these creatures scrabbled and mewled as agony gripped them and their worst nightmares came to life. And yet, so little imagination! Teaching your species the true meaning of suffering shall be an experience that I hope might transcend banality.’

‘The horrors you’ve conjured from this vessel have been insufficient to stop us,’ the Ultramarine says firmly. ‘The Emperor’s chosen will never fall to such cowardly treachery. Never.’

The puppet cocks his head with a gristly crack. ‘Oh please, mon-keigh, do not insult me. Do you think I cannot read the biological strain you are experiencing? Do you think I am anything but expertly informed on the neurophysiology of your mutant subspecies? I can see the agony etched in those clumsily forged veins with the racing beats of your two hearts. The dilation of your pupils suggests your sus-an membrane is malfunctioning from an overdose of your suit’s pain suppressants.’

I feel blood trickling from my nose.

+Keep. Him. Talking.+

‘And the agony you are currently suffering, which was sufficient to subdue an entire world without one iota of resistance, which was sufficient to reduce a vaunted team of xenos-hunters to vermin on the greatest jewel of Commorragh – this is the combined agony of but a single world,’ the flesh-puppet crows. ‘The Sorrowcrown’s vaults, wrought from the very bones of the Dark City, have the capacity to hold countless millions more. The bow wave of my masterpiece will drown whole systems in nightmarish pain weeks before I even arrive.’

+Arkamedies…+

‘I cannot be stopped, mon-keigh. The bones of the Sorrowcrown were laid in Commorragh before your species ever took to the stars. My victory was assured millennia before you were even created.’

Blood fills my mouth, more than I can swallow.

+Just a few… moments…+

‘Know this, xenos,’ Arkamedies snarls, his voice echoing Beymund’s righteous fury. ‘This is the last day that you draw breath.’

The human-puppet spreads his arms in a strange gesture and makes that grotesque laughing sound again.

‘Do you know what I find most disappointing in your kin?’ the sinister creature chuckles. ‘An utter lack of imagination in the arena of threats. Now allow me to make you a promise, mon-keigh creature. Your bones will form the handles of the instruments I use to extract suffering from millions of your wretched kind. Your muscles will form the cushions beneath my throne, where I rest my feet while I survey my domain. You skin will form the garments I use to clothe my glorious form. Your eyes I will embed into my armour, allowing you to watch with intimate closeness every mon-keigh I reduce to a screaming flesh-morsel. And I will keep you alive through it all, the dissected remains of your body sustained by machinery beyond the comprehension of your primitive species, your nervous system connected via unfathomable technology, so that every piece of your body may experience every iota of your humiliation until the ending of the universe. How does that sound?’

And with the speed of a lightning strike, the invasive presence abandons the mortal. His bloodshot eyes roll back into place and his mouth clicks painfully shut.

The mortal whimpers, as though awaking from a painful dream. ‘B-by the Emperor… i-is this… is this real?’

I see Kordred ready his thunder hammer beside me. Vrohn growls low, like an animal sensing danger.

‘Aye,’ Arkamedies replies warily, never lowering his grav-gun. ‘This is real.’

The man falls to his knees. He buries his face in his shaking hands. I can hear muffled sobs wracking him even over the sound of screaming. ‘I prayed,’ he blubbers. ‘I prayed… to the Emperor… and now you’re here!’

‘Yes, we are here,’ the Salamander replies, almost softly. He lowers his snarling flamer and steps forward slowly towards the mortal.

‘We need to leave this place,’ the Minotaur grates. ‘We’re too exposed.’

‘I… The things they did to us… I… I can’t…’

‘Ray’gor, our position is untenable,’ Arkamedies whispers, echoing Kordred. ‘We need to withdraw, regroup and redeploy. Now.’

The Salamander looks torn. ‘We’ll just get him to safety,’ he says. ‘It is all right, young one. Come. You will be safe with us.’

‘Ray’gor…’ I say.

The mortal crawls towards us. ‘I j-just… I just want… to go home…’

‘Ray’gor, no!’

The Salamander spares a sideways glance at me, no more than a fraction of a heartbeat. I watch, time slowed to a horrible, inexorable trickle, as the human’s body violently swells like a balloon and bursts in an explosion of gore and chemicals.

Ray’gor screams in agony, collapsing to his knees.

Dorthos is the first to his side. I arrive a heartbeat later. Ray’gor howls in anguish, clawing frantically. Within a second the hideous xenos hyperacids have eaten away his face and chest. Within three seconds most of his hands and arms are reduced to stinking sludge. He beats uselessly at his body with dripping stumps until the chemicals finally devour his vital organs.

‘Ambush!’

Energy bolts, razor shards and gurgling cannons open up on us from all sides at once in a thunderous cacophony. I hurl up a desperate shield with the force of the Altak’s winds as we dive into cover. They come from everywhere at once, swooping from the shadows above, leaping from hidden alcoves, crawling from the very floor. Howling, iron-helmed freaks swarm towards us with rifles and dripping blades. Slavering, skinned-canine abominations charge headlong into gunfire, compelled by animal hunger. Writhing offal-vermin surge over the dead in a hissing carpet of flesh.

‘Our cover won’t last!’ Arkamedies yells over the din. He leans out with his grav-gun and fires a sustained beam into the horde. A dozen drukhari are crushed to lumps of crumpled armour leaking viscera, as surely as if flattered by a Titan’s footfall. ‘We have to withdraw!’

Vrohn hacks Hrelka through a hunchbacked lab-mutant, dousing us in caustic white gore. ‘Where?’

The Ultramarine fires his grav-gun again. Another clutch of freaks messily collapses under their own weight with the wet crunch of breaking bones. ‘Back through the tunnels! We need to regroup!’

‘Every minute this ship draws closer to Yuvan Secundus,’ Dorthos yells. ‘With every world Zrakovius consumes the Sorrowcrown grows stronger!’

‘We have no choice! If we stay here we die!’

Kordred glances from cover back the way we came, in the direction of the wreckage of the Contempt. A bolt of migraine-bright darkness blasts a hole through his shoulder.

‘They cut us off!’ he yells, sparks bursting from the ruined bionic. ‘We’re surrounded!’

Torchos Sakal hauls Kordred back into cover, as a mewling abomination with sutured eyes claws at the Minotaur. The Flesh Tearer rams his chainsword through its stomach and saws its guts to offal before kicking the screaming wreckage free. ‘Damnation!’

‘There!’ I yell, pointing at a sluice-grate across the chamber.

‘You’re joking!’ Vrohn laughs incredulously as he rips a flesh-freak’s extra arms from its body.

Gore rains down as Arkamedies’ servo-harness snatches a flying drukhari from overhead and tears it in half. ‘There’s no telling where it leads, Tetsugei!’ he adds.

I unleash a crackling tongue of lightning as the roiling carpet of fangs and claws surges into our cover. The hissing creatures burst in a staccato of rupturing bodies. ‘I have a plan to end this – all of this!’ I shout over the cacophony. ‘But I need time. Trust me!’

Arkamedies stares at me for a moment that seems interminable in the middle of a battle. Finally he nods. ‘Kill-team, on my mark!’ He takes aim and trains the graviton beam on the grating, smashing open a portal into darkness.

Everyone with a gun left to fire slots in a fresh magazine and readies themselves. I overcharge the powercell of my plasma pistol. ‘Suppressive fire!’ Arkamedies bellows.

Arkamedies, Torchos Sakal and Kordred lean into the chaos and fire their weapons blindly into the wall of xenos attackers. Dorthos, Vrohn and I charge across the gap, trampling down anything in our path. Xenos gunfire snaps at my heels. Something sharp rips through my cheek. I hurl a crackling blast of lightning without seeing where it strikes.

We crash into cover next to the blown-out sluice-grate. Vrohn grins at me. ‘After you, Stormseer,’ he grunts, motioning to the filthy portal. Then he leans out into gunfire, blasting the oncoming horde.

I mouth a quick prayer to the Emperor and shove my armoured bulk through the portal.

I fall.

IX

I frantically scrabble as I plummet down the chute, but my gauntlets slip uselessly on mucus-coated walls. The sound and chaos of the battle above vanishes.

I clear the shaft. For a few desperate seconds I tumble in freefall before splashing into a river of chemicals, acids and gore.

Caustic, gut-wrenching vileness fills my mouth, burning my eyes. I thrash as the weight of my armour and the hungry current drags me to the bottom. I find floor beneath me, finally. I mag-lock my boots, and step by gruelling step I fight towards an embankment. I can’t open my eyes, not even for a second, not in acid.

Forward.

My muscles burn.

Forward.

My lungs ache with oxygen deprivation. I can feel the ground beneath me sloping upwards.

Forward.

My hand breaks the scummy surface. By the time I thrash my way to a metal embankment the paint is already dissolving from my armour, leaving patches of scoured ceramite. I can feel my skin peeling off my face, raw and burning, as I quickly wipe away acid and filth.

Before I can catch my breath I hear the telltale shouting of the kill-team growing sharply louder, before they too crash into the alchemical canal.

With the help of the Arts I quickly drag them from the mire.

‘Are you wounded, brothers?’ I ask them between pained grunts as I haul them to the embankment.

‘We’re all alive, if that’s what you mean,’ Kordred snaps, looking at the twisted ruin of his bionic arm. ‘Damnable xenogens.’

Vrohn spits out a mouthful of acid and chuckles. ‘At least the Astral Knight has a twin now,’ he says, pointing to Dorthos.

Both Kordred and Dorthos look unamused. ‘Yes, but I already lost that arm once,’ the Minotaur grouses. ‘I had hoped there wouldn’t be a second time.’

I glance around suddenly, feeling a notable absence. ‘Where’s Arkamedies?’

The kill-team peers around the embankment as the sick realisation dawns on us.

I look to Torchos Sakal, Dorthos, anyone. ‘Was he with you?’

‘He was right behind us!’ Kordred exclaims.

‘Arkamedies!’ Vrohn roars into the gloom. ‘Can you hear us?’

‘Dorthos, can you get a biometric reading?’ Torchos Sakal asks.

The Apothecary bangs his gauntlet against the side of his dented helmet. ‘I can’t get a lock on his armour.’

‘Meaning?’

Dorthos removes his battered helm and tosses it into the acid canal. ‘Either there’s too much interference, or my instruments are damaged, or…’

I lower the walls of my mind for a brief moment, suffering a storm of poisoned razor blades flaying the meat of my brain as I search for the spark of Arkamedies’ soul. The pain and sorrow suffuses the warp like a suffocating cloud.

With a strangled cry I reassert my defences. I wipe the trail of blood from my nose as I process the loss. ‘I think… he’s gone,’ I finally admit.

The Astral Knight breaks the ensuing silence, tending to the kill-team’s wounds as best he can with one hand and limited supplies. ‘Tetsugei, you said you had a plan.’

‘I do,’ I say with confidence I don’t fully feel.

Dorthos looks at me with narrowed eyes.

I meet his gaze with a nod. ‘We are going to kill Zrakovius.’

‘Finally, the White Scar has a plan I can agree with,’ Vrohn says.

I rapidly try to distil the sum total of my experience fighting the drukhari, the suspicions that I’ve had since Yuvan Tertius, the hideous psychic aura of the Sorrowcrown and the revolting sensation of speaking to Zrakovius’ slave-puppet.

‘This ship… is not really a ship. It is a laboratory.’

‘A laboratory?’

‘The sophistication of the weaponry, the obsession with pain, the construction of the vessel, this sewer network,’ I explain. ‘We thought we faced a simple military commander, an archon. Zrakovius is different. He’s allied himself with the haemonculi of Commorragh and become something… else.’

‘I know the flesh-crafters of which you speak,’ Torchos Sakal grunts. ‘This intelligence is valuable, Tetsugei, but I fail to see how this is materialising into an actionable strategy.’

We hear a wailing scream as a horde of slave-creatures tumbles from the chute into the acid river. Dozens rise, thrashing towards us even as they dissolve. As one, the kill-team opens fire, cutting down the survivors as they claw up the embankment, propelled by sick hunger.

‘We need to move,’ Torchos Sakal growls, kicking a clearly human corpse back into the sluice river. ‘They will discover we aren’t dead before long.’

The Apothecary applies fresh sealant gel to my leaking side wound. ‘We’re running out of time,’ Dorthos urges. ‘We have, at most, an hour before our medicae systems start to shut down. Once that happens…’

‘Every place of importance aboard this ship will be a place where suffering is inflicted,’ I explain quickly. ‘We’ve seen these sluice-grates in every torture chamber and laboratory since we left the Contempt, and I believe this sewer network runs between all of them. The drukhari crave suffering to abate their own. Wherever Zrakovius is, it will be a place of torture we can access.’

‘All well and good,’ Kordred grates. ‘But, as you’ve mentioned, this vessel is a voidborne city. Even if we can use this sluice network to stage an ambush, that bastard will have murdered the entire Yuvan System and Emperor knows what else before we find him.’

‘Not so,’ I say.

Dorthos’ eyes widen. ‘You told Arkamedies to keep the xenos talking…’

‘I did not realise it before, but the residue I felt on Yuvan Tertius, the pain-aura we feel, the entirety of the Sorrowcrown’s torture apparatus – it is all linked to Zrakovius. Connected, like veins and bones and blood. This place is the archon’s twisted soul, made large. Only when it was psychically infesting the flesh-puppet did I see it clearly for the first time – I was not looking at the heart of the weapon, I was looking at Zrakovius. He is the weapon.’

Torchos Sakal revs his chainsword in a spray of clotted xenos gore. ‘Does this mean you know where the xenos is?’

‘I am zadyin arga,’ I say with a grin. ‘I see through the storm.’

X

‘How many?’

‘Fifty. Sixty maybe. Could be more. It is hard to tell.’

Vrohn grunts. ‘I hope it’s more than fifty, otherwise I’ll have to share with the rest of you, and Hrelka doesn’t feel like sharing.’

‘And you’re certain Zrakovius is there?’ Torchos Sakal asks through gritted teeth. His pupils are pinpricks. The rage is on him.

I focus, feeling Zrakovius like a raw canker in my mind, his sadistic aura unmistakable, even in the howling cloud of agony and nightmares suffusing us. It sets my teeth on edge and fills my veins with lightning-hot rage. ‘It is here. I am certain of it.’ The archon’s hideous aura is so pervasive I can hardly sense anything but that within the chamber.

‘Then we should formulate our ingress,’ Dorthos advises. ‘I assume you have a plan.’

‘Hard and fast,’ I respond, tapping on the sluice-grate. ‘Through the wall. Kill everyone inside.’

Dorthos makes an odd face. It might actually be a smile, I can’t tell. ‘I admire the simplicity.’

The Minotaur hands his massive thunder hammer to Torchos Sakal. ‘Do you think you and your two hands can make do with this?’

The Flesh Tearer hefts the hulking weapon for a few moments, testing its weight. ‘Aye. I’ll get us through.’

I cannot help but look at my battle-brothers as we prepare to charge into certain death: a Minotaur, an Astral Knight, a Space Wolf, a Flesh Tearer and a White Scar, all veterans of their Chapters, all shot, burned, stabbed and tortured beyond even the limits of transhuman physiology. Our proud armour, once black and marked with our respective Chapters, is scoured an identical grey. And yet we prepare to charge nonetheless.

‘Angels of death,’ I announce to my battle-brothers, ‘purge the xenos from this place.’

With a roar of hatred, Torchos Sakal swings the thunder hammer through the grate, pulverising the wall separating us from the heart of the Sorrowcrown. In less than a heartbeat we’re charging through the breach into Zrakovius’ throne room.

With transhuman speed my eyes take in the chamber as the dust clears. It’s a horrific amalgamation of xenos throne room, torture theatre and ad hoc starship bridge. Gore-stained racks hung with the wreckage of human beings drip side by side with freshly installed banks of esoteric xenos machinery of unknown provenance. The old and the new is arranged, with seemingly ritualistic significance, around a massive apparatus the size of a Land Raider dominating the room’s head.

Dozens upon dozens of drukhari warriors are clustered in the room. Lithe, armoured xenos with long rifles stand at the ready beside gaggles of iron-helmed laboratory abominations. Helmed sword-wielders cavort with cruel-faced beastmasters and their fleshless yaksha-hounds. Three enormously swollen patchwork mutants loom over the rest, festooned with sutured extra limbs and implanted weaponry, and bristling with the sharpened barbs of their own overgrown skeletons. Screeching serpents that look like animated offal slither in blind hunger between them.

And in the centre of it all, dominating the dais like a false deity, is Zrakovius.

The vile xenogen lurks, spider-like, at the heart of a massive web of thrumming pipes, gurgling tubing and sweating biomechanical apparatus, little more than a ghoulish head and scarred torso suspended above the gore-slick deck. Machinery wreathed in crackling energy is burrowed deeply into its corpse-like skin, merging the xenos with the infernal Sorrowcrown.

And beside him is Arkamedies.

The Ultramarine has been stripped of his venerable armour and servo-harness, bearing his battered form before the envenomed blades of the drukhari. His bionics have either been ripped from his flesh or smashed to ruin. Every iota of his body is covered in flensing cuts, gouging wounds, chemical burns and raw bite marks. Strung up on a vile torture-rack like the one we encountered in Anvam Command, he looks like a marionette with its strings severed. Two enormous grotesques hulk beside him, each with a dripping implant-weapon held to Arkamedies’ bared throat.

Cold hatred fills me. I hold up my hand, calling the kill-team to a halt.

A trap. Another trap.

‘So, you have come to face me at last,’ Zrakovius crows. Its loathsome voice fills the throne room, coming from everywhere at once. ‘I expected you far sooner. I have had to invest great effort in keeping this one alive for your arrival. Your kind is not as resilient as I had been led to believe.’

The Ultramarine can barely lift his bloodied head. ‘You’re alive,’ Arkamedies whispers, barely loud enough to be heard across the chamber. ‘I knew you were alive.’

‘Drop your weapons, or he dies.’ I can see the grossly swollen muscles of the abominations bulge in animal anticipation. ‘Now.’

I do nothing of the sort. None of us do.

Zrakovius inclines its head. One of its laboratory freaks jabs a sparking electro-prod. Arkamedies screams.

‘I am unaccustomed to giving commands twice, mon-keigh. Drop your weapons, and I give you my promise that your deaths, and his, will be quick.’

I glare into the face of the xenos I am going to kill. Our weapons never leave our hands. The drukhari’s sinister grin drops from its face as it realises we have no intention of surrendering. I suddenly suspect that this archon has never physically faced Adeptus Astartes before.

‘You are a fool to decline my generosity, mon-keigh,’ the creature sneers. ‘The horrors I will visit upon you will make all that you have suffered in your life seem like paradise by comparison.’

‘You wanted me to keep him talking,’ Arkamedies wheezes through a trickle of blood. ‘I knew you’d find a way…’

‘Silence!’ Zrakovius snarls. I see the grossly mutated muscles of the abominations twitch, aching to shed blood. The archon takes a moment to regain its composure, then smiles. ‘Mon-keigh, do you know what is transpiring beyond the hull of the Sorrowcrown as we speak?’

I say nothing, because in the pit of my stomach I already know the answer, and I have no desire to give this xenos the satisfaction. The drukhari takes my silence as encouragement to continue.

‘We are currently in orbit over the next world in this system. I can feel millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of delicious mon-keigh souls crying out in torment at my presence.’ Zrakovius closes its eyes and breathes deeply of the astringent air of the throne room. ‘This world’s defences have already fallen without an iota of resistance. Already my forces are being deployed to harvest them.’

My grip tightens on my staff. The patchwork xenos mutants surrounding me flinch.

‘Do you know what will happen once I add them to the Sorrowcrown’s torture-vaults?’

My jaw clenches. Their barbed weapons tremble in their hands.

Good.

‘I will blot out hope across the sector,’ Zrakovius shouts, leering from the web of its throne. ‘I will smother entire systems in a wave of horror from which there is no escape. Millions will become billions, and billions will become trillions, all so that their suffering might nourish me.’

Lightning plays across my gauntlet. I see one of the drukhari take a step back from me, then another, then another.

+Be ready, brothers.+

‘And if, someday, a scribe of your primitive species survives to preserve the moment of my ascension, I shall ensure that it makes note that the downfall of your kind was ensured because you failed.’

The last of my macronarcotics fades from my blood. The soul-crushing agony of breaking bones and ripping tendons, of boiling blood and hopelessness and sorrow descends on me. Yet I feel none of it; nothing can compare to the incandescent storm I feel building in my chest, and the piercing sting of my medicae’s entire supply of combat-stimms dumping into my bloodstream.

‘You have lost, mon-keigh,’ the archon hisses. ‘You lost before you were even born.’

The tense air is shattered by Arkamedies’ weak laughter. The Ultramarine’s ruined form shudders as he chokes out a quiet chuckle, blood dribbling from his mouth.

Zrakovius turns its loathsome head to regard our sergeant. ‘You find the extinction of your species amusing?’

‘I told you… this was the last day you draw breath, xenos,’ Arkamedies rasps out. Then he heroically raises his bloodied face and across the throne room looks me in the eye. ‘Tetsugei,’ he calls out with the last of his life. ‘Suffer not… the xenos to live.’

Faster than striking berkut we charge Zrakovius’ cradle-throne in a storm of lightning, bolter fire, punishing blades, crushing ceramite, genhanced muscle and Adeptus Astartes rage. We know before we take the first step that Arkamedies is dead; the fact that a hulking brute hacks him in half the moment we attack is merely fuel for our fury.

But it is irrelevant – we are the elite of the Ordo Xenos, the Angels of Death, the vengeance of the Emperor of Mankind. Our deaths were sealed the moment we set foot upon the Sorrowcrown, and an eternity in the Emperor’s presence awaits us. We were forged to know no fear. We are fear.

And now, thanks to this xenos creature’s colossal hubris, we are within killing distance, outnumbered only ten to one.

Vrohn charges into the thickest knot of xenos with his ravenous frost axe swinging around him. Shrieking patchwork monsters and shambling flesh-ruins fall on him with hooks and blades and needles. He smashes through them, hacking through armour and flesh and bone with savage, blood-hungry fury. Nothing can stop him.

Torchos Sakal hurls himself towards one of the hulking drukhari mutants. The roaring of his chainsword matches the manic howl of rage echoing from his throat. The sheer force of anger blazing from his heart is like a supernova. Out of the corner of my eye I see the wiser of the xenos attempt to flee from him, while the more foolish stand their ground. All of them die, messily.

Kordred lowers his shoulder and barrels headlong into the first foe that shoots at him. A dozen drukhari guns open fire on him at once. They might as well be spitting at an iron cliff. Even wielded one-handed, his thunder hammer smashes xenos and machinery alike to crumpled ruin.

Dorthos draws his strange glowing blade and dives into the killing. Though he lacks an arm, the soul of a duellist shines through the Apothecary’s staunch battle-pragmatism. Here it is unleashed; there is no one to minister to, no one to save, only a single chance to make all our deaths mean something. He sweeps from enemy to enemy, plunging his glowing sword through backs and chests and necks and throats. Blood spurts as the heads of haughty xenos swordsmen roll before him.

And I… I go straight for Zrakovius.

In the first few seconds of battle I’ve already watched the archon’s pale face crumple from arrogant bliss to burgeoning concern. Seeing half of one’s guards butchered before the brutal force of an Adeptus Astartes assault has that effect. Every fight in which it’s faced us has seen us ambushed or tricked by xenos treachery. Now, for the first time, it’s a fair fight. We are unleashed, faster than lightning, roaring like a tempest across the Altak.

Lightning erupts from my staff and turns a clutch of blade-wielding xenos to blackened corpses. Battering winds hurl them across the throne room with enough force to crack bones. The armoured drukhari brace against machinery and unleash their howling weapons upon me in a panic.

I am zadyin arga. They are nothing before the spirits of the Altak.

A pained scream echoes across the room. I spare a fraction of a moment’s glance to see Dorthos stabbed through the back by a wicked xenos blade. I shoot the attacker from across the chamber with my plasma pistol but, as I do, two, then three, then four others fall on the one-armed Astral Knight. He hacks half of them to death with his shining blade before their acids eat through his torso and he falls, split in half at the waist.

I hear Vrohn howl like the predators of Fenris. He’s fighting towards Zrakovius’ throne, drenched in black xenos ichor. Half of his armour is acid-scorched slag, but Hrelka is still crackling with thirst.

I whirl around quickly, trying to find Kordred and Torchos Sakal in the chaos. I can’t locate either amidst the sea of stitched corpse-flesh and barbed, crimson armour.

Focus.

I redouble my speed, forming my psychic onslaught into a guan dao as I sprint up the dais towards Zrakovius. The archon is screaming frantic commands to its warriors as it hangs, immobile, in the middle of a warzone.

I’m close. Less than a dozen drukhari stand between me and revenge for all the souls taken by this sadistic fiend.

A massive tower of overgrown flesh and extraneous limbs thunders through my storm winds and crashes into me like an autocannon shell. The living wall of muscle and sinew flattens me to the deck. The breath is crushed from my lungs and my force staff clatters from my fist. The mutant ogre roars in freakish misery from behind its iron helm. I scrabble up and bring my pistol to bear, but before I can get a clean shot the monstrosity jerks upright and thunders a punch into my chest. I feel my boots leave the deck moments before I crash onto my back.

Blood fills my mouth. My armour’s auto-systems tell me my multi-lung is ruptured. I try to pull myself to my feet but a grotesque foot slams me to the deck. My plastron buckles. I cough up more blood. I can’t breathe.

Torchos Sakal, drenched in xenos gore, rams into the abomination, driving his chainsword up to the hilt in its gristly chest.

The mutant-ogre emits a drooling, basso roar. Acidic blood gushes from the wound, coating the Flesh Tearer in burning ichor. Rather than draw back, Torchos Sakal revs his chainsword and forces the blade deeper and deeper into the flesh-golem’s torso, even as his arms begin to melt down to the bone. The warrior’s roar of pain and rage bellows from his throat until the acids finally eat through his lungs and he slumps to the ground in a puddle of his own dissolving body. The grotesque creature fumbles weakly at the chainsword bisecting its corpse before laboratory-forged biology fails.

And with the toppling of their freakish champion, the last of the drukhari break. Ignoring Zrakovius’ shrieking, the remaining few xenos turn and attempt to flee the throne room, frantically trampling piles of their own dead. Vrohn shoots all but one in the back with his pistol. Kordred sluggishly rises from beneath a pile of corpses to flatten the last into a smear on the deck with his thunder hammer.

And then, at long last, there is nothing separating me from my prey.

‘You think you have won,’ the xenos crows, black ichor leaking from its mouth. ‘I have lost count of the times I have died and been reborn to this world. When I return I will be restored, and you will be flesh for me to play with. You have merely forestalled the death of your Imperium by a span so short I will be unlikely to note its passing.’

I glare into the xenos’ black, soulless eyes. ‘I am familiar with the practices of your kind. I imagine you have many bodies stowed on this ship to store your mind, or machines that can rebuild you from a few fragments,’ I wheeze. ‘Am I correct?’

‘Mildly impressive,’ the xenos grins. ‘When I return to claim Commorragh, draped in your skin, I shall ask my kin among the other covens if they ever encountered… what is your name?’

I spit a mouthful of blood to the deck. ‘You will not find the other archon who faced me. It is dead, as you will soon be.’

Zrakovius inclines its head. ‘Yes, but, as you pointed out, my death will last only as long as it takes for my minions to collect my remains and rejuvenate me. You may kill me in the most savage way your brutish mind can imagine, vent your rage upon my corpse until your dying muscles give out. It means nothing.’

‘Not if I destroy your ship.’

The xenos laughs. ‘Forgive my incredulousness, but you are one of three half-dead mon-keigh mutants against a vessel containing tens of thousands of my warriors and minions, a vessel you have no conception of how to destroy.’

‘No, I do not know how to destroy this ship,’ I admit. ‘But you do.’

A moment of confusion spreads across the stretched horror of its face before I take its head in my hand and slam it against the cradle-throne. For the first time, perhaps ever, I fully drop the walls around my mind, letting the full might of my power free.

I dive into the drukhari’s mind like a bolt of lightning from the sky.

I’m submerged in rancid filth. The needle-razor agony is unlike anything I’ve ever suffered. Distantly I can hear my armour alerting me to cranial damage, and I feel blood start to flow from my nose. The howling darkness of Zrakovius’ foul xenos mind lashes and rages. It’s like fighting a storm cloud made of poison and regret and horror – the essence of the Sorrowcrown distilled into one impossibly twisted mind.

But I am zadyin arga. I am the storm made flesh.

I dive deeper.

The xenos fights me. It knows what I seek, and it attempts to stymie the probing lightning bolt of my will. Images of my battle-brothers dying on Chogoris before the Tyrant rise before me. Memories of Beymund, and Arkamedies, and Dorthos, and so many others surround me, trying to suffocate me, slow me.

But I am zadyin arga. I am speed that cannot be chained.

And there I see it, the kernel of knowledge it’s attempted to hide from me. It stinks of fear – not the human sustenance this vile xenogen craves, but true terror. It throws the sum total of its mental defences at me in a final desperate bid to keep its secrets from my mind.

But I am zadyin arga. Nothing escapes the eye of a seer.

With a roar of hatred I violently tear the thought from Zrakovius’ brain.

My mind is forcefully shoved back into my body. My limbs quiver with raging power, wreathing my armoured form in the lightning of the Altak. Power blazes from my staff and bleeds from my eyes. Ethereal winds thrash around me in a psychic tornado, filling every vein of my transhuman body with the rage of Chogoris herself.

Even my battle-brothers look on me with guarded awe.

‘Did you learn how to stop it?’ Kordred shouts over the wind.

‘I think so,’ I say, surveying the enormous contraption encompassing the archon’s cradle-throne. ‘I think this great machine it’s connected itself to is designed to be a nexus. Funnelling the suffering of millions into this xenogen parasite.’

‘Stay away from that!’ Zrakovius shrieks.

I run my crackling gauntlet over the gurgling biomechanical piping, melting the xenos metal with my touch alone. I can feel the extent of the raw power coursing through it. ‘If the Sorrowcrown is a chorus, this machine is the conductor.’

‘I said back, filthy mon-keigh!’ the drukhari screams. ‘Do not touch that!’

‘And if destroyed,’ I smile, feeling the lightning playing over my bloody lips, ‘it would render all that unstable fuel uncontrollable.’

Zrakovius gnashes its fangs and howls. ‘I will kill you! I will peel the flesh from your bones and rip you–’

‘You will do no such thing, xenos. You will die here. By the vile machine you spent your life building,’ I intone, my voice thrumming with the booming thunder of the Altak. ‘And when your black soul reaches whatever xenos hell awaits your kind, tell the rest of your foul species that it was the Adeptus Astartes of Kill-Team Beymund who sent you.’

And before the xenos can open its mouth to spit further threats, I turn, form the maelstrom blazing around me into a single devastating attack in my hands, and unleash the deafening blast into Zrakovius’ precious throne.

Arcane machinery explodes in gouts of sparks. Biomechanical tubing ruptures messily across the throne room. Massive esoteric conduits become slag beneath the lightning fury of the storm. The whole of the Sorrowcrown heaves beneath our feet as though struck with a lethal wound to its rotten heart, throwing the throne room into darkness.

‘What have you done?’ the archon shrieks, panic writ upon its corpse-like face. ‘What have you done?’

‘I thank you for your cooperation, monster.’ I grin. ‘I wish I could leave you alive long enough to see the final destruction of the Sorrowcrown, but, as you heard uttered by the brave warrior you murdered, we suffer not the xenos to live.’

A pervasive subsonic whine begins to build, loud enough to set my teeth on edge. It grows, moment by moment, from a whine to a squeal, a squeal to a shout, and from a shout to a roar. Zrakovius thrashes frantically against the machinery. The wreckage of the throne glows with uncontained power, seeking release, before pouring into the archon. I step back and shield my eye. The drukhari’s corpse-white flesh glows with sickly light as its body swells and stretches.

The xenos throws back its head and looses a piercing scream as raw power blazes from its mouth and eyes. With a bone-shaking thunderclap, Archon Zrakovius, xenogen abomination who thought itself safe from the Emperor’s vengeance, explodes into crackling cinder, utterly vaporised.

And then there is quiet, but for the sound of the dying moans of the xenos at our feet.

It descends then, with the fading buzz of adrenaline and combat-stimms: the daraa ni. Only this time the taste is not bitter on my tongue. It reminds me of my first days after donning the plate of the ordu, when war felt simple. I’m glad I got to experience it again, before the end.

Like storm clouds vanishing before the morning sun, the infernal pain-aura begins to recede. It’s a sensation more wonderful than I care to admit.

Vrohn breaks the silence, gesturing to the scorched wreckage of the drukhari’s insidious cradle-throne. ‘Now that was something I’ve never seen before,’ he says. ‘Can all Stormseers do such a thing?’

‘Only the very strongest,’ I cough out with a weary grin. ‘When we’re angry.’

‘So what happens now?’ Kordred asks, struggling to his feet.

I retract my extended hand and let the Minotaur stand on his own. ‘The energy needed to power the terror-weapon is unleashed. Uncontrolled. Fail-safes may engage. They may not.’

‘Can the destruction of the Sorrowcrown be stopped?’

‘By design, only Zrakovius could have done so, I think. If he had this conduit, that is,’ I say, gesturing to the smoking pile of wreckage. ‘Once the overloaded power reaches critical mass, I think not.’

‘Then it’s done?’ the Minotaur asks.

I nod. ‘Yes. It is done.’

The Space Wolf breathes a deep sigh, interrupted by the wet cough of a ruptured lung. He spits blood across the deck, and fingers the edge of his frost axe. ‘I wish I could’ve seen Fenris one more time,’ Vrohn says wistfully.

‘I know little of it,’ I admit. ‘I would have liked to see it.’

Vrohn bark-laughs. ‘You’d have hated it. It’s too cold for any but the Vlka Fenryka. Your Chogorian arse would’ve frozen solid.’

I smile. I like the Space Wolf.

‘Do you have a home world, Kordred?’ I ask my Minotaur brother.

He shrugs to a gout of sparks. ‘I have the Daedelos Krata,’ he grates.

‘A battle-barge?’

He nods. ‘Of sorts. Forged in ages past to carry the fury of mankind into the darkest heart of war. Every bit as ugly and hard-bitten as Lord Moloc. There’s no ship I’d rather have sailed on.’

I sigh, gazing at the sparking wreckage of the Sorrowcrown’s bridge, slathered in xenos gore. ‘I hate ships. I never wanted to die on one.’

Kordred looks at me with a raised eyebrow. ‘No?’

I smile to myself, sadly. ‘I wanted to die under sky.’

The Minotaur grunts like a backfiring engine. Had he been able to, I think he would’ve smiled. ‘So did I.’

We three battle-brothers lapse into an exhausted silence, enjoying the final moments of peace before the last supplies of our medicaes drip dry. In the distance we hear the pounding of approaching footsteps as hundreds of desperate xenos rush to the aid of their master, their beloved ship dying around them. More distantly we hear the sound of starship weapons pummelling the Sorrowcrown as Yuvan Secundus’ fleet rejoins the battle.

‘Well then,’ Vrohn says. ‘How long until this vile ship is scrap, sergeant?’

‘Not long,’ I reply, rolling my aching shoulders.

‘Pity,’ Kordred grates as he hefts his dripping hammer against his shoulder. ‘I was just starting to enjoy myself.’

A maddened tide of xenogen horrors charges onto the bridge; towering flesh-golems, blood-mad corpse-cultists, shrieking monstrosities and feral beasts hurl themselves towards us in a desperate assault. They know their end is coming – they just believe they can stop it.

I grin like the Chogorian I am as we charge to meet them with bolter and blade.

AWAKENED

Sarah Cawkwell

Dust. It scratched at their night-black armour in a relentless whisper, driven by the cold wind. Systems filtered the worst of it, but visual distortion and screeds of charged static dulled artificial senses, forcing reliance on the biological gifts they had been granted. Four pairs of transhuman eyes scanned the tortured landscape of barren rock, while a fifth pair focused on the task at hand.

Turning from his vigil, Dorji folded his arms across his chest, shifting his weight slightly. His brothers knew the White Scars warrior well enough to be aware that this change in stance suggested irritation, and when he spoke a few seconds later, it was with no small amount of impatience. 

‘What is the delay, Drussus?’

The hulking warrior working at the bulkhead did not look up from his work, but instead raised one huge shoulder in a shrug.

‘There is a certain amount of finesse involved in setting melta charges, brother-sergeant,’ he replied in his heavily accented voice. ‘Patience is a virtue. Is this not something you tell us regularly?’

‘Do as I say, not as I do, brother,’ retorted Dorji. ‘Patience may be a virtue, but so is speed. Make no mistake, Drussus. Right now, I value the swift strike over the patient hunt.’

‘Just a few moments longer, brother-sergeant. Assuming, that is, you want me to breach the facility rather than simply demolish it.’

Beneath his helmet, the sergeant’s lip curled upwards in a smile that he was glad Drussus could not see. He had grown accustomed to the specialist’s laconic manner. The thorough nature of the Silver Skulls warrior was occasionally trying, his tendency to superstition often frustrating, but his meticulous attention to detail was peerless. Not to mention his talent with the heavy bolter.

Drussus clamped the last charge into place, then took a step back, surveying his work critically. Apparently satisfied, he nodded sharply and the squad slid smoothly into breaching formation.

‘About time,’ muttered Jannick. The Black Templar stood at the fore of the squad, his bolter resting in the notch of his heavy shield. He would be the first through the breach. Some things in life were inevitable, and Jannick Leiten was one of them. Dorji silenced him with a sharp hiss of reproach, but Drussus simply shrugged again and took up his position at Jannick’s right shoulder.

There was a sudden flash and a ripple of displaced air as the atmosphere inside the bunker, the heat of the detonation and the planet’s natural atmosphere warred for supremacy. Dust fused into glass and plasteel momentarily vaporised, leaving a gaping wound in the side of the structure that the Space Marines surged into.

Streams of molten metal and vitrified pellets pattered from their armour. Dorji stepped on something wounded and thrashing, crushing it with supreme indifference beneath his armoured boot. Something else came out of the half-light, stunted limbs flailing, and he shot it twice, filling the air with scrap and fluids. Drussus followed him in, heavy bolter chugging controlled bursts into the gloom.

What paltry resistance given was overcome in seconds, and the remainder of the squad joined Jannick, Dorji and Drussus in the cluttered chamber. It was apparent that no further enemies were forthcoming, and Dorji took the chance to look down at the remains of what he had killed.

‘Servitors?’ he snorted, his voice thick with contempt.

Ska’dir, unquestionably one of the finest Techmarines with whom Dorji had served, stooped briefly and studied the remains. ‘Correct, sergeant,’ he said. ‘And not those which are built for combat.’ The Salamander gave the remains a cursory pass with his auspex. ‘Data processors,’ he continued. ‘Their routines appear to have been corrupted in some way.’

Bringing up the rear came Neidan. The Mantis Warrior was the newest member of the squad and Dorji was still finding the measure of the man. He was not given over to boisterous conversation like Ska’dir, or even good-natured squabbling of the sort that took place between Jannick and Drussus. But his credentials had been outstanding and Dorji found him to be observant and intelligent, and he asked questions that made them all think.

The banks of cogitators that had once lined the walls of the bunker were smashed into unrecognisable scrap, but the shielded plasma conduits they had followed to this place were undamaged, thanks in no small part to Drussus’ careful charge placement. The pipelines disappeared into the yawning shaft of a mass conveyor.

‘If they are not combat servitors, then why did they attack?’ Neidan asked. The gentle glow from the lens of his targeter was trained steadily on the opening leading into the earth, as if he expected it to vomit up fiends of the empyrean at any moment. Given the eerie silence of the facility, such a thing was certainly not beyond the realms of reason.

‘It does not matter,’ Dorji said, his tone sharp. ‘It is not our immediate problem.’ He nodded. ‘Move out.’

Ska’dir obeyed, moving onto the mass conveyor, followed by the rest of the squad. Delicate mechadendrites curled from the Techmarine’s vambrace and interfaced with the platform controls. After a few moments there was a grinding of massive hydraulics and the conveyor began to descend into the flickering dark.

‘Curious,’ Ska’dir rumbled.

‘What is?’ Dorji glanced at him.

Light from the erratic, strobing lumen strips reflected dully from the etched steel script of Ska’dir’s sleeve, exaggerating his silhouette and projecting a bizarre shadow that was not unlike a baroque arachnid. He replied to his sergeant’s question in his slow, ponderous way. ‘The machine-spirit that controls this platform, I had to force its compliance.’

‘You believe this to be some sort of corruption, brother?’ Dorji asked.

Ska’dir did not reply. He fell into a contemplative silence, the kind that suggested he was communing with the machine-spirit to which he had alluded. Dorji did not interrupt him. He had learned that leaving Ska’dir to his work was always the wisest course of action. The Techmarine was good-natured, but easily irritated.

During the descent, Ska’dir studiously kept his attention on the auspex, and when it began to pick up readings he broke the silence.

‘Multiple signatures,’ he said. ‘They are coming from below, and they are moving fast.’ The auspex spluttered and hissed, and a howl of angry static washed across the display.

‘I see them,’ Neidan responded softly. He crouched at the lip of the conveyer, scanning the darkness of the shaft. His long-barrelled bolter coughed three times and something below screeched in mechanical outrage. With practised ease and rhythm, each member of Dorji’s squad took their positions alongside their brother. As a unit, they opened fire.

Scuttling shapes raced up the shaft towards them, multiple limbs carrying them effortlessly up the walls and slanted roof of the tunnel. A torrent of explosive bolts tore the approaching creatures apart, hurling their shattered remains back into the depths, but the attackers were surprisingly resilient. Armoured, artificial bodies absorbed impacts that would have reduced a flesh-and-blood soldier to wet rags.

Neidan’s skill was impeccable; the Mantis Warrior picked off enemies with cool precision, the modified rounds of his weapon punching through hardened torsos and tearing off segmented limbs. But despite the sustained fire, the first of the figures reached the platform. The mechanised, skeletal figure of a skitarius rushed directly at Dorji, stained red robes flapping, and the sergeant glimpsed the face of tubes and lenses beneath the hood. The smudged skull-and-cog design worked into its armour was impossible to mistake.

It surged towards him, an incomprehensible shriek of static and machine code blurting from its vox-grille, and Dorji fired twice, leaving a crater in the warrior’s breastplate. The sergeant released his bolter and drew his dao in a single fluid motion. The crackling edge of the short, curved blade cut cleanly through two of the skitarius’ flailing limbs, then the sergeant reversed the blow in a chop that cleaved its head in half. Despite the killing blow, the heavily cybernetic skitarius continued to lurch and twitch its way across the conveyor until it toppled over the edge of the platform.

‘Traitors within the Machine Cult.’ Dorji glanced over at Jannick. The warrior was crushing another skitarius to the deck with his shield and firing repeatedly into its babbling face. ‘By my oath, this heresy will not go unpunished!’

‘This is not a good omen,’ Drussus rumbled, and Jannick snorted.

‘Not a good omen?’ His retort lacked the fire of sarcasm with which he usually responded to Drussus’ superstitions. ‘Your misplaced faith in the omens of witches and seers once again astounds me, brother.’

‘The Martian Cult are loyal,’ said Ska’dir, not rising to Jannick’s bait. ‘Drussus is correct. Something else is at work here.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Neidan, quietly, ‘but I agree with Jannick. Heresy should never go unpunished.’ He was still new to the squad, and was always careful when offering an opinion, particularly when Jannick was involved.

‘Enough.’ Dorji cut off the squabble before it got out of hand. ‘We can discuss the finer points of your differing ideologies later.’ He nodded down the shaft as the sound of skittering continued. Another skitarius shrieked onto the platform. The air was filled once more with the sounds of combat: the strike of a sword and the cough of a bolter as the would-be attacker was blown apart.

A silence descended, the rumble and clank of the conveyor as it brought the squad to the ground the only sound. Dead skitarii, some intact and some torn apart by the weapons fire of the Space Marines, were scattered around the sandy floor, blood and oil mixing into pearlescent puddles. 

The group moved away from the graveyard for the inhuman, heading through the only entranceway from the conveyor. It opened out into a vast, high-vaulted chamber which did not reflect the modest bunker and conduits on the surface. The xeno-archaeologists stationed here were sheltered – both protected from the world outside and protecting the world outside from anything they might accidentally uncover. Those safety precautions had been wise.

If one did not linger on the fact that the Deathwatch squad had breached the exterior walls.

The squad moved through the hall in silence, their superhuman senses keen to further threats, but nothing else loomed from the darkness. Ska’dir’s auspex pulsed quietly as it reported a wave of false signals and then fell silent again. The place should be crawling with adepts of the Machine Cult, menials, xeno-archaeologists and servitors going about their business.

But there was nothing.

Banks of cogitators, some smashed, some still chugging quietly, lined the walls of the big chamber, which passed through still further to another vast, vaulted room. Armourglass cases, workstations littered with dataslates, and the remains of sample tubes smashed on the floor suggested this was one of the xeno-archaeology labs. A pair of ruptured stasis chambers, large enough to house an armoured Space Marine, stood to one side, their magnetic locks torn apart.

‘Everything has been taken, sergeant,’ observed Ska’dir as he made his way to a damaged analysis table, its mechadendrites torn. Where they lingered, their fibre bundles sparked. ‘This was connected to something, but the object has been forcibly removed.’

He ran his hand over the broken device and turned to look at some of the others. Everywhere, there was evidence of a hasty withdrawal – artefacts removed improperly or with force – but there was no sign as to whether it had been an evacuation, a rout or an attack.

‘The skitarii?’ Jannick hypothesised, but Ska’dir shook his head.

‘I do not believe so, brother. They are warriors first and foremost. It is not beyond the realms of possibility, but this does not fit the profile with which I am familiar.’

‘Then what is going on here?’ Drussus asked and received another snort of superiority from Jannick.

‘In my opinion,’ he offered, in a familiar tone that said the group would receive his opinion whether they courted it or not, ‘this is treachery, or xenos pollution.’ His phrasing and pitch suggested well-contained but righteous rage fuelling him from within. ‘Suffer not the xenos. If nothing pure yet lives within these halls, then all must be put to the sword.’ There was no room for doubt in Jannick’s words; there rarely was.

‘We must be sure. The incursion code we picked up can only be issued manually and then only with the correct authority,’ said Ska’dir, ever the voice of calm reason. Jannick turned to the Salamander and seemed ready to argue the finer points of loyalty, but a glance from his sergeant held his retort in check.

‘Can you extract anything useful?’ Dorji queried the Techmarine with easy familiarity. ‘Are any of the internal vox-systems or sensorium still working?’

‘The damage is severe. It may take some time to draw anything meaningful from them, but I will see to it right away, sergeant.’ 

‘Internal plans, power sources, biological traces. Any information on what they were studying here. If there is an indication of the location of the inquisitor as well, that would be excellent.’ Ska’dir inclined his head in acquiescence and turned his attentions to the machines.

Dorji turned away from him, leaving him to his work, and began to study the huge laboratory more closely. Everything was askance, tools and instruments in disarray; there were signs of devastation everywhere.

‘It is possible, of course, that this is just wanton destruction,’ observed Neidan. ‘Other than the removal of the artefacts, it does not appear to follow any sort of pattern.’

‘It is the most likely explanation,’ responded Jannick. ‘You saw what happened on the conveyor. Some madness has taken hold here and infected the once loyal with treachery. How fortunate for you, brother, to be able to visit death upon the traitor,’ the Black Templar finished pointedly.

‘Sergeant, look here.’ Drussus’ voice was sombre. Dorji crossed to where the Space Marine was hunkered down.

Drussus pushed at the body he had found and it rolled over onto its back. A young woman wearing the robes of the Mechanicus lay there, the remains of her organic face little more than a ragged mess of torn flesh and bone. It looked as though she had been at work in front of one of the consoles, perhaps simply minding her own business.

Death had been swift and sudden.

They moved into the next chamber to find a charnel house. Blood and oil stained the floor of the laboratory, still fluid, oozing from the horrific wounds that marked the bodies of skitarii, servitors and menials alike. They had evidently turned on one another in a murderous frenzy. While Ska’dir worked on the cogitators, the rest of the squad searched through the dead, looking for the bodies of the inquisitor or any of his retinue, but they did not find them.

‘Brother,’ Dorji said, returning to Ska’dir, ‘there are none here but the dead, unless you have found a trail.’ He received no reply, the Techmarine concentrating fully on the output from the cogitators, standing motionless as a statue. Even as Dorji watched, one of the many mechadendrites twitched slightly in response to some unseen stimulus. Then there was a loud crack and the Techmarine disengaged from the machine, stumbling backwards. The interface sparked wildly and a small fire took hold. Dorji swatted it out with his gauntlet and turned his attention to the Techmarine, who was staggering slightly.

‘Brother, report.’ Dorji’s words came out as a snap and he tempered his darkening mood.

The set of the Salamander’s shoulders suggested he was troubled. ‘The machine-spirits in this place are…’ He paused, choosing his words with care. ‘They are poisoned in some way. They did not wish to respond to me. Once again, it was necessary for me to force their compliance. But something is there behind them, veiled and insidious.’

Dorji frowned. ‘Are you able to report anything other than riddles, Ska’dir? Anything of use at all? Perhaps something that might show us the face of our enemy. Something to hint at what has occurred here?’

‘Most of the records have already been destroyed or have been degraded by whatever pollution afflicts this place,’ Ska’dir continued. ‘But there is a fragmentary log with an Inquisitorial designation.’ He worked at one of the instruments in his modified suit. ‘Let me share this with you.’

A series of grainy, indistinct images appeared on the squad’s retinal display, overlaid with scratchy and broken audio.

‘Something is waking.

‘Its secrets have lain undisturbed for millennia, but now… so much that we can learn, if it can be contained. I have ordered a stasis lock be placed on…

‘…some kind of locking device! I have secured it in the void vault but the esoteric readings that it is giving off are harmonising with the field integrity… a fascinating discovery that if properly harnessed…

‘…ruptured the vault. Fortunately, a force of skitarii were able to drive… considerable casualties. I also lament the loss of my savant, Deran, who was studying in the vault at the time of the breach…

‘…so many, but moving as if driven by a single mind!’

The recording ended and Ska’dir stopped it before it replayed.

‘So there is something alien deep in the earth beneath this place. We shall see it destroyed,’ Dorji growled. ‘Is there any sign that the inquisitor still lives?’

‘I have an incomplete schematic of the facility and some internal sensorium readings report biological and thermal traces consistent with a human presence. If the inquisitor is alive, we may find him in a mezzanine room off a chamber two halls over from our current position. From what I have gleaned it would appear to be an auxiliary armoury.’

‘Then that is where we go,’ said Dorji, not waiting for any further data. ‘Now.’ But there was one last surprise waiting for them as they left the chamber and moved into a connecting corridor. A middle-aged man, dressed in the uniform of a menial, stumbled around the corner and hurried towards them as fast as he could manage. His head oozed blood from a wound above his eyes and his coveralls were filthy and bloodstained. He saw the Space Marines, and his eyes filled with warring terror and hope.

‘Omnissiah be praised,’ he said. ‘They’ve gone insane! Help me!’

A crude spear of jagged plasteel pierced him from behind. He spat out a great gout of blood before crumpling to the ground, twitching.

His killer surged into view, stepping on the now lifeless body, which gave way beneath its considerable weight with a sickening crunch. It was nearly as tall as the Space Marines and from its bulk was clearly more machine than man. It paused for only a moment as the nest of lenses beneath its hood focused on the Deathwatch brothers. It gave a scream of machine noise and scratchy static.

Long mechanical legs like those of a spider extended, lending its scuttling advance a surprising turn of speed. Neidan spun to one side, narrowly avoiding the broad swing of the magos’ axe.

It struck out again, this time at the sergeant. One of its four arms wielded the crude weapon with which it had killed the menial, while another terminated in an energised cutting blade used by xeno-biologists to perform autopsies. Dorji parried the blade with his own, filling the corridor with blue sparks.

Drussus could not bring his heavy weapon to bear in the close confines of the corridor, but backed off to cover his brothers. Jannick pressed in, and while the axe gouged deep gashes into his shield’s ceramite surface, he pushed it into the magos’ inhuman face. He fired his bolter at the same time, but the shells did not penetrate its armoured body and did little more than blow out one of the eye-lenses. He did not hesitate or waste more ammunition but put his weight behind the shield, half lifting the bulk of the magos from the ground.

Dorji moved with practised grace, fast and deadly. He ducked another wild swing of the sizzling scalpel and lunged for the magos’ body. Instead, the blow met an augmented arm and the dao sheared through it like a hot knife through butter. The severed limb clattered to the ground. Pinned and missing a limb, the magos thrashed, machine code and noise shrieking from its vox-grille.

While Dorji and Jannick had kept the magos engaged, Neidan had calmly circled behind the melee, waiting for an opportunity. Jannick’s position made any shot a calculated risk. Instead, Neidan stepped up onto the writhing bulk of their attacker, and using one of its shoulders as an anchor, pressed his bolter into the nape of its neck and fired three controlled shots.

The shells punched through the magos’ armoured dermis, exploding within the bulk of its body. Oil, lubricants and vital fluids belched from the puncture wounds, leaking from stress fractures in its torso. The magos sagged as half of its limbs went dead beneath it, and it let out a distorted screech of fragmented machine cant that made Dorji wince beneath his helmet.

Then the shattered, cybernetic body slumped slowly to the floor. Neidan stared impassively down at the dead magos, smoke curling from the barrel of his bolter.

‘That was well done, brother,’ said Dorji, and Neidan shrugged. 

‘I did not want to put Jannick at risk…’

His response was interrupted by a sudden mechanical chittering sound coming from the fallen magos. A dozen metallic scarabs tore their way out of their fallen host. Without missing a beat, one of Ska’dir’s mechadendrites snaked out and washed the body and its xenos guests with blazing promethium, immolating them with chemical fire.

‘Suffer not the xenos,’ intoned Drussus. Dorji inclined his head in agreement.

‘We need to move swiftly if we are to contain this menace. Let us find the inquisitor and put an end to this.’ The sergeant sheathed his dao. If the tomb had not yet fully roused, then it was possible the greater threat could be ended before it truly began. If it was relying on hijacked bodies rather than true servants of its own, a single, clean cut might be enough to behead the beast.

The hunt was on.

Following the grainy hololith of Ska’dir’s schematics, they progressed quickly towards the main excavations. The chamber into which they passed was filled with machinery, tools and grav-sleds. A long conveyor disappeared down into the depths and was likely responsible for bringing up personnel and artefacts from below. But now it was still and silent, with none of the noise that would once have echoed throughout the facility.

‘There,’ said Ska’dir, indicating an armoured entrance. ‘If he is alive, he will be there.’

Cold air flowed out from the excavation pit like the breath of the grave, and where only a moment ago the hall had been silent and empty, hunched figures now emerged. They detached themselves from the shadows dripping baleful, spectral light.

As one, the Deathwatch opened fire.

Inquisitor Yusan Areistes had not risen to his position by being careless. An uncompromising nature coupled with a readiness to set aside the beliefs of some of his more zealous peers had produced results and earned him a degree of leniency when it came to his methods. He firmly believed that in order to destroy the xenos, one had to first understand the xenos, an attitude that had granted him cautious acceptance when he had arrived on this world and taken charge of the xeno-archaeologists.

The opportunity to study esoteric xenos artefacts that were more than scattered salvage lifted from the fields of battle was something he had long waited for. The objects’ powers defied conventional science to a degree that the Adeptus Mechanicus found difficult to explain. If such powers could be harnessed for the good of the Imperium, then Areistes was sure the current tide of darkness from the empyrean could be turned aside.

Now, however, harnessing power was far from his thoughts as he tested the weight of the unfamiliar weapons in the armoury. He was not alone. Three other survivors stood quietly to one side, similarly arming themselves and quite comprehensively not speaking. Garst and Romil were the last surviving members of his personal guard, veterans of the Astra Militarum, but the third was an unknown quantity, a low-ranking adept that had introduced itself only as IO-471-Tertius. Four survivors from a staff of hundreds. Assuming they somehow got out of this place, the Adeptus Mechanicus would doubtless demand an explanation for the loss of resources.

The sudden thunder of gunfire outside cut through the tension, far louder than any weaponry Areistes believed to be stored in the facility. He reached into his coat and ran his thumb over the activation stud of the weapon concealed there, reassured that if the armoury was breached then he would at least claim a pyrrhic victory. The sounds of furious battle raged outside for what felt like an eternity. Every crash and roar drew closer, at one point the impacts striking the vault so hard it shook bolts in their locks.

As quickly as it had erupted, the violence outside ceased and gave way to an almost painful silence. Something heavy crunched outside, followed by three dull blows on the door. It seemed highly unlikely the enemy that had ravaged the facility would simply knock and expect to be answered.

The small group of survivors aimed resolutely at the door as the inquisitor stepped forward to cautiously release the locking bolts. The armoured hatch swung open to reveal the hulking form of a Deathwatch sergeant. Areistes smoothed the relief from his features, presenting a neutral face to the five Space Marines who waited outside.

‘You received my transmission,’ he said, by way of greeting. ‘Excellent. By the Emperor’s grace, we can put this place behind us.’

The Deathwatch sergeant said nothing, simply keeping the glowing lenses of his helmet locked with the inquisitor’s eyes. Areistes was not fazed by the silence, remaining ramrod straight and meeting that gaze with no hint of fear.

Regardless, Areistes broke the deadlock first.

‘I am Inquisitor A–’

‘Areistes,’ the Space Marine interrupted. ‘Yes, I know who you are. And we will evacuate when the xenos threat is ended.’

The inquisitor nodded.

‘Then you have the advantage, Sergeant…?’

‘Dorji, of the Fifth Watch.’

‘Sergeant Dorji,’ the inquisitor continued, ‘and that threat will be most effectively ended by a bombardment, don’t you agree?’ He was unmoved by the Space Marine’s ambivalence, and continued. ‘Unless there is a compelling reason not to annihilate this site from orbit?’

‘Inquisitor, this facility is already dead, but I have reason to believe that a greater enemy is waking beneath our feet, one that must be ended before it can begin.’

‘It will know that we are here,’ interjected another of the squad. Areistes recognised the trappings of a Techmarine. Sergeant Dorji nodded at his companion’s words. The exchange was minimal, but Areistes had not reached his current position without being skilled at reading body language.

‘Then you’ve seen them? The scarabs?’ He made a concerted effort to keep neutrality in his tone.

‘And the madness of their unclean touch.’ A third warrior stepped up to stand beside Dorji. ‘Sergeant, no matter what this tomb has to offer, we cannot tarry here. This place must be destroyed.’

‘Peace, Jannick. Let the inquisitor have his say.’

‘Sergeant, I ask that you consider the ramifications of such an immediate act.’ Areistes took a confident step forward. Three helmeted heads swung towards him and he stopped. ‘Listen to me. Bombardment is the answer, but so soon? I do not believe the tomb can fully wake at this time. There is time to gather artefacts that would be invaluable to my…’ But it appeared the sergeant did not care to hear what the inquisitor had to say after all. He interrupted the man’s words and spoke in a flat, emotionless tone which nonetheless bore all the hallmarks of chiding.

‘What is it that you have woken in this place, inquisitor?’ 

The Space Marine called Jannick spoke again, addressing Areistes directly. ‘These halls are a monument to arrogance, thick with the bodies of those too blind to see it. And you talk of xenos relics?’

The sergeant let his warrior speak and then picked up when he fell silent. His voice was a calm and measured counterpoint to the other’s passion. ‘Inquisitor Areistes, a tomb of the necrontyr stirs beneath our feet. Our Techmarine believes that there is still time to destroy it before it fully wakes. To that end, and in the Emperor’s name, we will descend into its heart and purge the xenos with bolt and blade. If you wish to leave, the Blackstar Wrath is in low orbit,’ He paused for just a moment as Areistes tried to absorb the information. ‘You are free to make your own way to the surface and signal for extraction.’ The sergeant made the offer, and Areistes bristled.

‘Sergeant!’ Areistes’ voice came out sharper than he had intended. Then he sighed and shrugged. ‘You are right. I must be held accountable. As such, I must accompany you.’

‘Do you wish to live, inquisitor?’ It was blunt and it was harsh and Areistes’ composure, already pushed to the limits, cracked for just an instant. 

‘I… do not want my work here to have been in vain,’ he said with deep regret. ‘But I also know that there is a chance to gain some insight into our enemy. You should know full well the importance of that. I will come with you as far as the relic chamber. I will recover what I can and I will leave.’

‘Very well, inquisitor,’ said Dorji, conceding the point. ‘Try not to get in the way.’

‘I believe some are already awake.’

The inquisitor offered up the information as they began their descent. Much of the facility had been cut from the cold, hard rock of the planet and the smooth walls of the tunnels bore the telltale signs of industrial melta work. The warren of passages frequently gave way to soaring caverns given over to workshops, banks of cogitators and research stations, all bearing the distinctive cog and skull of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

All of them were deserted or littered with the recently dead.

‘I have no desire to condescend the Emperor’s Angels, but are you familiar with necron tombs?’

‘I have fought the necrons before,’ Dorji confirmed. ‘But never in their den. Not like this.’

‘I have,’ said Drussus and his tone was sombre. ‘It cost the lives of many of my brothers of the Silver Skulls to vanquish them. Have any of the upper ranks risen yet, inquisitor?’

‘There is a leader, I am sure,’ said Areistes. ‘The attacks began three days ago and they were too targeted not to have some sort of intelligent mind behind them. If one of their leaders is awake, they will likely have an attending retinue. Caretaker constructs have been sighted. I believe that the unit designated a cryptek has been awoken, perhaps due to the disturbance of the tomb, and it is attempting to initiate the waking protocols.’

Dorji turned to the man. ‘We’ve seen spyders and wraiths as well as the scarabs, but they appeared occupied, as if something eludes them.’ Drussus made a sound expressing his distaste, a sentiment Dorji could certainly share. ‘What else do you know, inquisitor?’

‘I believe that the cryptek is missing something vital that has interfered with the tomb’s operation. Something required to complete the waking process. An artefact, or some sort of key.’ The tone of the inquisitor’s voice was tinged with smugness and told the sergeant all he needed to know.

‘A key which I surmise your team have removed.’

‘A correct supposition, sergeant.’

They came to the scorched remains of the magos and the inquisitor shook his head a little sadly. ‘That’s what became of him,’ murmured Areistes. ‘A shame. So much knowledge wasted that we could have used.’

IO-471-Tertius bowed his head to the remains, meshing his cybernetic fingers together in the sign of the cog. He blurted something in machine cant, though whether it was a benediction or a curse was unclear.

‘Some knowledge is too dangerous,’ said Dorji, motioning for them to continue. ‘The cryptek is the priority target. Once it has been destroyed, Drussus, bury this place with demolition charges.’

‘Acknowledged, Sergeant Dorji.’

The group stepped into a huge, vaulted chamber. A nest of beams, cranes and gantries filled much of the cavern, forming a scaffold around a small fleet of bipedal walkers. Four-legged tanks, their blocky cabs partially stripped and draped in hoses and fuel conduits, sat in maintenance bays to one side of the chamber. Limp servo-limbs dangled around the bays, splashed with blood and oil from the equally lifeless bodies sprawled everywhere.

‘It is regretful that it must come to such destruction,’ said the inquisitor, looking around. ‘But I will concede to your authority on this.’ He took a breath to continue, but his attention was ripped away.

A spectral, insectoid shape rose from the floor of the hall, haloed with emerald light. It drifted weightlessly, as if carried by a ghostly wind, before turning to regard the group with a nest of lambent eyes. The Deathwatch kill-team opened fire, but most of the shells passed harmlessly through the insubstantial form. A few impacts sparked from its metallic body to little effect, and then it surged towards them.

Drussus continued to fire, the armoured belt of his heavy bolter chugging as it fed a continuous stream of shells into the roaring weapon. The wraith twisted in the air and its long, segmented tail snaked out. In one instant the creature went from phantasmal to solid, its tail splitting the tech-adept from shoulder to hip, spraying blood in a scarlet cloud.

The rest of the Deathwatch kill-team spread out, pouring fire into the drifting construct. Ska’dir moved to shield the inquisitor and his companions with his imposing bulk, and the wraith lunged at him with its bladed limbs. The Techmarine blocked and parried with his servo-claws and mechadendrites, but the creature’s whip-fast movements made his efforts seem cumbersome. Chips of ceramite sprayed in all directions as one of the mechanised limbs came away from Ska’dir’s pack, and the Salamander snarled in fury.

A fresh hail of heavy bolts pummelled the wraith from the side as Drussus hammered it with another salvo, and several of its claws came away in a welter of green energy. It sputtered and writhed before flickering into solidity. Stripped of its primary defence, the wraith lashed about in a frenzy, scoring deep gashes in Ska’dir’s armour and shattering Jannick’s shield with its squirming tail. A well-placed shot stunned it before the weight of fire brought it down, carapace cracked, sparking with emerald energy. Ska’dir closed the distance and shot the spasming husk in what passed for its head.

‘Brothers?’ Dorji said as the remains of the wraith began to fade away.

‘I will mend, sergeant,’ Ska’dir replied.

Jannick’s vambrace was cracked from the impact that had broken his shield, but he flexed his fingers and drew the long, double-edged sword from his back. ‘Faith is my shield,’ the Black Templar growled and nodded to the sergeant.

‘The main dig site is this way,’ said Areistes and led them onwards without another word. Drussus moved to stand beside Dorji.

‘Something about his attitude does not sit right with me, sergeant,’ he said. Dorji glanced at him and they started following Areistes as he moved on. 

‘Do you believe him to be compromised, brother?’

‘No, sergeant,’ said Drussus in his stoic manner. ‘He is too keen to enter the heart of darkness, but I think he is doing so of his own volition. He has purpose in his stride and determination in his manner.’

Over the years they had served in the Deathwatch together, Dorji had never had reason to doubt Drussus and his excellent skills of observation. He nodded in agreement. ‘Perhaps, but then it is the nature of the Inquisition to foster secrets. Guard him well, brother.’ Dorji let it hang in the air and received an understanding nod in reply.

They were heading downwards, a sandy slope that opened out onto what was quite clearly the main dig site. The broad, high cavern was huge and roughly circular, with the telltale smooth walls of melta cutting. There were tools strewn everywhere; tunnelling equipment, huge industrial-sized magna-meltas and crates of charges lay where they had been dropped. Like the chamber they had encountered previously, the floor was littered with broken servitors, dead menials and, here and there, the occasional red-robed tech-priest. Foetid puddles of oil and blood mixed together to stain the metal floor.

A massive black pyramid protruded six hundred feet into the air from the bare rock of the floor, with sides so smooth that Dorji felt a strange urge to touch his hand to it to see if it was as frictionless as it looked. It was not without its features, however; faint runes, alien and unintelligible, bobbed in the air around it.

‘Suffer not the xenos,’ murmured Jannick. Dorji glanced over at Areistes, who was looking at the pyramid with an expression of utter fascination on his face.

‘How do we get in to deal with the xenos threat?’ Neidan asked the question of the room, but it was Drussus who answered.

‘They will come to us, is that not so, inquisitor?’ Neidan and the rest of the Deathwatch kill-team turned to look at Areistes.

‘Yes,’ he said in response to Drussus. ‘Or at least very likely.’ He reached into his robe and pulled out a small black object, spherical and covered with a filigree of green threads. ‘This is what the cryptek seeks. This is the key that will awaken the tomb. It’s a reasonable hypothesis that it would also open the way for us.’

‘You know this because you opened it before?’ Dorji held out a huge hand for the sphere, but Areistes backed off slightly.

‘I did. But I could not have known there was anything other than caretaker constructs inside. The Imperium is besieged, sergeant. Both from without and within. The necron possess technology that transcends time and space and is not subject to the corruption of the empyrean. Imagine the fleets of the Indomitus Crusade with such technology at their disposal. The great enemy would fall at our feet. All we need do is look beyond what is, to what could be, and if that vision requires sacrifice, then so be it!’

‘There is more than just one great enemy, inquisitor,’ said Dorji, evenly. The inquisitor said nothing for a moment, clearly wrestling with an inner struggle. He took another involuntary step away from Dorji, which moved him closer to the pyramid. Sensing the artefact in his grip, the pyramid responded. Where once there had been a smooth wall, there was suddenly a portal of green light, steady and unnatural.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened, and then several figures appeared beside the xenos edifice. There was nothing gradual about the process: one moment they were not there and the next, there were five of them. The humanoid, skeletal figures, formed from living metal, were painted to appear as though they had been moulded from porcelain, apart from the emerald sigil worked into their chests. Each carried a bladed rifle glowing with the same flickering green fire of their eyes. Areistes hastily shoved the sphere back into his robes.

The Deathwatch brothers rushed into the cover of the heavy machinery littering the cavern as the necron warriors opened fire. Coruscating arcs of energy filled the air with the crack of discharge and the stink of ozone. Dorji watched while Drussus, slower than the rest, was caught in the shoulder. The gauss weapon stripped half of his silver-trimmed pauldron away, the armour disintegrating at the molecular level.

Drussus grunted but did not break his stride. He braced against the shell of a magna melta and opened fire. A storm of bolts chewed up the floor of the cavern, hammering into the approaching necrons. One of the skeletal figures jerked and twisted around as its arm was torn off and the pristine plates of its body shattered. It collapsed silently to the ground and its companions continued to press forward, heedless of the loss.

‘Garst, Romil,’ the inquisitor began, barking orders to his men. ‘Take up flanking positions and maintain suppressing fire.’ The two soldiers fell back in good order, each man covering the other before splitting left and right to take up more defensible positions. Areistes backed away from the approaching necrons and fired the carbine he had taken from the armoury.

The first of the inquisitor’s companions had barely had time to fire three shots before another wraith emerged from the floor of the cavern behind him. The wraith’s tail and razor-sharp claws closed around him. Garst had no chance to even cry out before the pincers sheared through flesh, sinew and bone, and cut him into ribbons of gore.

Another wraith rose from the floor, a pair of whiplike appendages flailing from its forelimbs, while the portal disgorged a spyder that drifted through the air to the fallen necron. Scarabs descended from its underside and within seconds the scattered pieces of the warrior were drawing together, the light returning to its eyes.

Dorji and Ska’dir poured fire into the newly arrived wraith, while Neidan climbed another of the melta arrays. Even with arcs of killing light streaking around him, the Mantis Warrior’s aim was steady. His Stalker-pattern bolter fired and the head of a necron warrior shattered, shards exploding in all directions.

The inquisitor was taking cover behind an excavator, and it was clear that the thrust of the necrons’ attack was in his direction. His surviving companion was providing covering fire in an effort to give him a line of retreat, but the advance of the xenos was inexorable. The machine was being stripped out of existence, one molecular layer at a time by the gauss fire, its bulk reduced to dust by the alien weapons.

Dorji paused briefly to reposition himself and took the opportunity to glance around, taking in everything that was happening. Neidan fired again and another warrior dropped, but the first of the xenos that Drussus had destroyed was already rising to its feet and picking up its weapon. Drussus was firing on the wraith that had killed the inquisitor’s man and was pushing it back towards the cavern wall with sustained fire from his heavy bolter.

From behind, a deep voice boomed.

‘For the Emperor!’

Jannick rose from cover, roaring, crackling arcs of fire creasing the air around him and burning his ceramite. ‘For the Emperor!’ He lifted his sword, charging forward with his bolter blazing at the ranks of necrons, drawing their fury. Momentarily relieved, the inquisitor scrambled from his position back towards the relative safety of the Deathwatch kill-team, sprinting from cover to cover while his guard covered his retreat. Dorji fell into step behind Jannick, his bolter raised, firing shot after shot.

Romil stood to follow the inquisitor, but five more necron warriors materialised from the portal and opened fire. The man dodged and weaved, but then an arc of green light struck him in the back. Body armour, flesh and bone were instantly stripped away at the atomic level in a cloud of crimson-flecked dust that sloughed to the ground.

A gauss beam scored Jannick’s thigh and another blistered his breastplate, but then he was among the first rank of necrons. The mechanised warriors were lethal at range, but whatever protocol governed their reactive behaviours was blunt and mechanical. The Black Templar beheaded the first xenos without breaking his stride, then turned and impaled another. Dorji saw something hit him in the back, but he barely staggered. He withdrew the sword, rotated his grip and stabbed backwards, meeting resistance. Dorji continued to provide supporting fire, his bolter roaring. Then he unsheathed the dao and waded into the melee with Jannick.

A beam stripped away part of his armour, scoring a wound in his side. Beside him, another beam punched through the black-and-white heraldry on Jannick’s shoulder. Dorji roared and cleaved another necron in two. A blade chopped into his leg, dropping him to one knee as a skeletal figure loomed above him, bladed rifle raised for a beheading stroke. Jannick rammed his sword through its chest, but the fire in its eyes did not go out. The necron’s face bulged before it burst, exploding into spinning shards. Dorji glanced up and nodded his approval.

Up on his perch, Neidan lowered his bolter and reloaded.

Areistes slid in beside Dorji, reloading his rifle. Ska’dir had finished off the wraith, which was already fading out of existence, but both the Techmarine and the sergeant had used a lot of ammunition vanquishing their elusive foe.

‘We cannot stay here, sergeant,’ the inquisitor stated. ‘Either we retreat, or we push forward into the pyramid.’

As if in response to his words, another figure materialised beside the portal. Its metallic face had expressionless, angled features, and its artificial body was worked with ostentatious decoration and xenos script. It carried an ornate staff in its hands that crackled with lethal energy.

The necron commander stood perfectly tall and straight, and had it not been for the cloak that hung from its shoulders, it would have been quite motionless, like an otherworldly statue. Instead, the living scarabs that made up the cloak writhed and twisted. Dorji knew immediately that this had to be the cryptek the inquisitor had mentioned before. It took a single step forward, surveying its surroundings impassively, before levelling its staff in Areistes’ direction. Every remaining necron warrior turned, following the cryptek’s gesture, while the spyder set about restoring the warrior felled by Jannick’s blade.

‘Inquisitor, destroy the artefact!’ Dorji roared as he emptied his bolter at the approaching xenos. He had precious little ammunition left.

‘I have only ever acted in the best interests of the Imperium, sergeant,’ said Areistes, ‘but you are right. I am never unprepared.’ He drew another object from the voluminous depths of his robe, and Dorji recognised the ceramic sphere of a vortex grenade. Incredibly rare and unpredictable, the vortex grenade was a weapon of last resort that would rip a hole in realspace, condemning anything and everything caught in its blast to a horrific fate in the consuming energies of the warp.

No further discussion on the matter took place, because a beam of solar energy lanced from the cryptek’s staff. It burned a hole clean through the inquisitor and scored the wall behind him. Areistes stood there, his expression a mix of pain, shock and complete outrage. Then he stumbled backwards. He dropped the grenade, which rolled away from him before he sank to his knees.

‘So much… to do,’ he said in the voice of a man who knew his life was now measured in seconds. He pitched head first onto the floor and the artefact tumbled free from his robe.

Dorji dived for it as another searing beam punched through the machinery, but suddenly, impossibly, the cryptek was there. The object rolled away, past the fallen inquisitor, and the necron went after it. The sergeant knew that if the xenos got its hands on the key then it would disappear as swiftly as it had appeared. The tomb would wake and a fresh legion of necrons would rise to threaten the Imperium of Man. The cryptek put one metallic foot on the dying inquisitor’s head, crushing his skull as easily as it might have done an overripe fruit in order to reach the artefact. The sergeant fired and the explosive bolts forced the necron to lurch to one side. Then his weapon fell silent and he dropped it, taking his dao in both hands.

‘For the Emperor, for the Khan, and for the Deathwatch,’ he said, neither knowing nor caring if the thing understood him.

The cryptek whirled and parried the blow with its staff. Dorji spun away and struck again, the dao cutting a furrow in the necron’s armour. Ska’dir struck it from behind, shooting it twice from near-point-blank range while the servo-arm that still functioned grabbed at its head. The scarabs absorbed the shells and glistening bodies sprayed from the impacts, as more of the creatures burrowed into the Techmarine’s artificial limb, attempting to hijack its functions and turn it against its wielder.

Dorji struck one way then another, each blow stopping just short of taking the cryptek’s head, but what the xenos lacked in skill it made up for with strength and toughness. It struck backwards at Ska’dir, knocking the Salamander to the ground, then blasted at Dorji with another beam of energy.

Ska’dir grabbed the fallen vortex grenade, throwing it towards the cryptek as Dorji twisted from the path of the blast. He caught the tumbling orb with one hand and brought his sword down on the necron with the other.

The dao blade glinted, reflecting the sickly green light of the pyramid as it sliced into one of the cryptek’s arms. The limb detached and the necron let out a crackling snarl like a burst of static, close enough to recognisable pain to satisfy the warrior. However, his moment of satisfaction was eclipsed in the same instant as the cryptek’s staff speared through him, cutting cleanly through ceramite and biting into the flesh of his body. 

Dorji had been wounded before. He was not concerned by the injury. But he was concerned by what followed.

Responding to some unheard and unseen command from their foul master, the multitude of scarabs that had previously formed the cloak around the cryptek’s shoulders poured down the staff towards the Space Marine. Dorji could see the fate that waited for him; he had seen it scattered throughout the facility.

‘Suffer not,’ Dorji spat, ‘the xenos. For the Emperor!’

He pressed the arming stud on the vortex grenade and reality caved in. The very air screamed around him, twisting, contorting, giving him flashing glimpses of the impossible as it folded in on itself. Time stood still for half a heartbeat, and then the empyrean took him.

The room bulged impossibly, contorted by the ravening warp singularity. Tools, debris and wreckage spiralled from the floor of the cave into the aching hole that had been punched in the fabric of the universe. Auto-senses scrambled as they returned contradictory readings, and Ska’dir shook his head vigorously to clear it of the static. The vortex swelled and roared, pulling in more of the mining machines and crumpling the remains of the wraith the Techmarine had killed, but it could not be sustained.

The singularity whined and collapsed.

The appalling and unnatural light of the vortex drained away, and Ska’dir watched as the remaining necrons simply winked from existence as suddenly as they had appeared. The vortex grenade had remained contained, though there was no sign of the inquisitor, the cryptek or the sergeant.

Ska’dir tapped the side of his helmet, attempting to clear his neural transmitters of the interference wrought by the scarabs. There was no indication that their presence remained, and all systems were slowly returning to normal.

For a while, no one spoke. Then Neidan climbed down from his perch and picked up Dorji’s sword, which was lodged in the rock of the floor. He hefted it, quietly admiring its balance and beauty. Then he looked up at the squad. ‘It should be returned to Chogoris, to be wielded by one of his brothers.’

‘You should keep it,’ Jannick replied. ‘So that it will be.’

Neidan looked at the wounded Black Templar, who nodded slowly.

‘Will the tomb remain in stasis now?’ Drussus asked, looking at Ska’dir.

‘For now,’ the Salamander replied. ‘Nonetheless, set charges to bury this place. I will signal the Wrath for extraction. Once we’re done, this world will be under sanction.’ The transference of command was effortless.

Jannick rose to his feet, nodding his agreement. ‘Xenos extremis,’ he said.

BROTHER TO DISHONOUR

David Guymer

His bike was already moving as fast as it could go. Trees flashed by – grey, brown and green in an unbroken corridor. Branches snapped against armour. Massive tyres tore up twigs and plant mulch. Grit pinged off the transparent ceramite of his visor. His helmplate display was an epileptic event of flashing icons, their alarms swallowed by the roar of the engine. He ignored them. He jinked and swerved on instinct.

Rethek blinked away the hazard avoidance overlay and replaced it with a cartographic.

Acrymorse was an arbour world. The swathes of crucifixes were its forests. The winding jumbles of chevrons were its mountains and hills. Lonely aquilae staked out the grid positions of lumber camps, isolated satellites to the gargantuan sawing, packing and treatment stations sited along the distant coast.

There were few good roads. Not even game trails. For all its Arcadian appearance, Acrymorse was an artificial world, as bound to the vices and needs of mankind and its wars as any hive world or promethium moon. A single flashing blip drew across the north-east quadrant. It nudged another pixel ahead of his positional rune.

Rethek scowled. He was not going nearly fast enough.

With the brute howl of a tortured machine, a greenskin bike swerved from the wall of trees. The xenos machine was low slung, suspension non-existent. A spike-studded front wheel thrust belligerently forward of the saddle on a pair of elongated steel forks. Perforated exhausts stood vertically to either side of the saddle, emitting a black smoke that trailed the speeding vehicle like pennons from the antennae of a champion’s tank. Its seat was so low that its inhuman occupant was almost skidding over the dirt track. The ork filled it like green putty wedged into too small a space for its volume. Long, muscular arms extended to grip the steering bars in massive fists, glyph tattoos inked into the knuckles. A red bandana bearing a crude skull-and-crossbones motif wrapped its head. The knot flapped behind it like a ponytail. Lips peeled over yellow teeth, and the ork nodded in thuggish parody of a salute.

The ork was enjoying this.

Its pleasure sickened Rethek.

Still grinning, the greenskin pulled a pistol from a saddle holster. It looked as though it had been carved from a construction block. Despite the crudity of its appearance, it kicked out a spray of lead slugs as effectively as any properly anointed Imperial stubber.

Rethek veered, sweeping across a line of trees. Mature boles, planted by adepts of the Departmento Aboribus before the breaking of the Imperium, were torn to sap and splinters by gleefully inaccurate fire. Sacrificing one hand from the steering bar, Rethek drew his own sidearm from its mag-lock – a Guardian-pattern bolt pistol, an ornate piece of ceramite and steel, one of a kind, as revered as the ork’s weapon was abused. The aim of his bionic hand was as steady as if he and his target were standing on a shooting range.

He returned fire.

Ricochets painted the two bikes as they ran parallel. But Rethek’s armour was thicker. His aim was truer.

He knew this xenos.

A well-placed bolt penetrated the side-fairing of the ork machine. The explosion shredded the nearside fork and the wheel flew into the forest. What was left of the fork drove straight into the ground, the fulcrum of a two hundred miles-per-hour catapult.

The greenskin bellowed as it was thrown from its saddle, breaking against the thick trunk of a tree about a yard from its machine.

Rethek holstered his pistol and returned his attention to the trail.

The tree behind him creaked and began to topple. The ork was almost certainly still alive. Rethek’s gene-line made a virtue of endurance, enough for him to have weathered three hundred years of hard service with the Deathwatch, and he had experienced the tenacity of the greenskins many times. They were almost as hard to kill as he was. Today, that was not his concern.

His eye flicked again to the helmplate cartographic. It was becoming a compulsion. A weakness. His gene-line knew about that too.

Unremarked, such was the thunder of his own machine, two more Adeptus Astartes bikes swept from the trees to flank him.

To his left rode Asmodael. The Dark Angel was proud and distant, austere even against the metrics by which Rethek judged himself. Robes the colour of bone riffled over Deathwatch black.

To his right was Jeddai of the White Scars. The warrior had arrived at Watch Fort Ulysses with a fleet of attack bikes as tribute from his Chapter, and the cognomen The Vulture of Chinngis. Rethek did not know what he had achieved to earn the name. He presumed it to be in honour of his superlative skill with bike, speeder and gunship, though acknowledged that it could equally pertain to his habit of poking at things that others knew to leave well alone. By preference he rode unhelmed, the fearsome headwinds accentuating his features, flattening his cheeks, narrowing his green eyes to sharp, lens-like slits. A topknot almost three feet long trailed like a dragon in his wake.

A fourth bike fell in silently behind them. The rune floating over Rethek’s tactical cartographic told him as much. Even on the back of a roaring Space Marine bike, the Raptor, Kharvis, was unseen and unheard. His talent bordered on the supernatural.

The Deathwatch was not a true Chapter and these warriors were not Rethek’s brothers. What bonds there were between them were of efficiency and circumstance. Rethek’s primarch would have approved, had he lived to see it. They were here because they could ride. They were his because he had fought the greenskin xenos for more centuries than the three of them combined. There was no more to it than that.

‘We have been at this pursuit for half a day,’ said Asmodael, voice breaking through the kill-team vox. ‘Our bikes require respite, for maintenance and prayer.’

‘Do you think the orks will rest?’ said Rethek.

‘If he knows how great his lead on us is, he will,’ said Jeddai in thickly accented Gothic.

‘His lead grows by the hour,’ said Asmodael. ‘In spite of its gross size, the xenos’ command vehicle is considerably faster than our bikes.’

Jeddai muttered under his breath, but made no argument. He patted his bike’s front cowl as if to assuage its offended spirit.

‘That is why we must catch him,’ said Rethek. ‘Mekboss Spanna Ardtoof is the insane genius that holds this ork Waaagh! together.’

Rethek could hear Asmodael’s wince through the vox-link.

‘You speak the tongue of the greenskin as if it were your own. Is there no end to your sins?’

‘It is my duty to know.’

‘And your line always does its duty,’ Jeddai added.

Rethek did not rise to the Vulture’s clawing.

‘After the sack of the Administratum capitolis-base at Batarus, the mekboss has separated from his warband. He means to find a shortcut through the great forest and beat the bulk of his horde to the seaport at Sargatha. This is our chance to bring him to heel, and to liberate this world before the war for it truly begins. Brother Lyrell gave his life to give us this opportunity when he planted the auspex homer on the ork’s battlewagon.’

‘Brother…’ Jeddai sneered, but said nothing more.

‘We should return to Batarus and await the arrival of the Spirit of Sotha,’ said Asmodael.

‘Have our orders been changed?’ said Rethek.

‘Given the damage to the city’s vox-masts, we are outside of viable range and within the radius of the…’ The Dark Angel hesitated, discomforted ‘…the mekboss’ signal jamming. As well you know.’

‘The point is moot,’ said Jeddai. ‘We all know what the Spirit’s orders will be.’

‘I do not presume to guess my orders,’ said Rethek. ‘Do you?’

The White Scar was quiet for a long moment.

‘No.’

‘Then we proceed. I am still watch-captain and our orders are to harry and assail the ork with every tool at my disposal.’

‘Do you think any bike can outrun your disgrace?’ said Jeddai.

Always he needed to draw first blood with the last word. Before Rethek could deny him that, the trees behind them exploded.

A heavy ork truck bulldozed through the swathe. Its entire frontage was given over to a spiked metal roller that obliterated the forest in its path. It was two storeys high and fully enclosed, riveted with armour panels that had been decorated with fiery zigzags. A pair of jet turbines that appeared to have been looted from a downed Marauder had been bolted onto the roof. Flames gushed from the jerry-built boosters, driving the scrap truck after the Space Marine bikes at unbeatable speed.

For all his arrogance, Asmodael was not wrong in this. The mekboss and his creations were too fast.

Unnoticed beyond Rethek’s tactical register, Kharvis had already peeled off and swept behind the ork vehicle. The Raptor aimed for the turbines on the truck’s roof with the twin-linked bolters mounted on his front cowling. Impacts sparked from the more haphazardly set armour plates, but the engines continued to burn unmolested.

An ork as big as a Space Marine in full armour popped the cupola hatch. The brute was bare-chested, clad in brawn and a crossed set of bandoliers. Chewing on a fat cigar, it gripped the toggles of a pintle-mounted heavy stubber and twisted it around towards Rethek.

It opened fire.

The Space Marines jinked and swerved, criss-crossing each other as they weaved amongst the trees. Rethek’s talents as a rider were hard-earned and owed little to genetic pedigree. They came instead from decades of practice and endless repetition, enhanced by the sheer cogitation power of an augmented mind, and by the marginal reductions that bionic surgery could make to a baseline transhuman’s response time.

Asmodael and Jeddai rode by breakneck instinct. There was a fluency to their manoeuvres that was absent from Rethek’s. A warrior who took the lessons of their primarch more literally, or to extremis, might look upon that weakness of form and see a fault to be rectified. But Rethek was too old. He had seen too much. He had served with too many brothers-of-necessity to be fooled by his own congenital neuroses now. By differing routes, they arrived upon the same end. The overlap in their methodologies was intentional and devastating. Experience had taught him that truth. Ten millennia in the forging, and all as the Emperor – as evidenced through His founding design – would have willed it.

The ork bellowed as its heavy stubber mauled exhaust fumes and tyre tracks. Pounding a fist on the truck’s armoured top it roared down in its guttural language.

‘Break,’ Rethek barked.

The truck’s boosters burned hot. The bolts securing them to the vehicle’s roof rattled and squealed. For a moment Rethek hoped to see them fail, the Motive Force of the Machine-God rip the turbines free, but ork engineering was more resilient than its appearance often suggested.

The sudden burst of acceleration lurched the truck forwards. Asmodael and Jeddai broke off: left and right.

Rethek worked the throttle. The proud machine answered with a willing growl and an increment of thrust. The pulverising roar of metal-spiked annihilation rolled closer. Turning in his saddle, Rethek fired back with his sidearm. Bolts detonated around the driver’s vision slit, pinging off the whirling spikes of the front roller.

He adjusted his aim, up, and put a single shell through the pintle-gunner’s forehead. The mass-reactive detonated inside of the ork’s skull, patterning the inside of the cupola and the pintle shield with its gore.

In its death spasms, the headless corpse gripped down hard on the firing toggles, and Rethek swerved to avoid the blizzard of stubber fire. After a twelve-second burst, the weapon jammed. A second after that – with the dead ork still squeezing determinedly on the trigger – it exploded. The cupola lifted off the roof of the truck. Shells popped like firecrackers as explosions worked their way down the heavy stubber’s belt feeds and into the central magazine. Curses echoed from inside the truck and the vehicle skidded out of control. Its front roller missed Rethek by inches.

He swerved back, coming in alongside the careening truck as Jeddai did the same. The White Scar beat him by fractions, planting the soft putty of a melta bomb to the vehicle’s side before veering off with a ululating whoop of celebration. An eruption of ultra-high energy microwaves gutted the truck, flash-cooking all inside. Its final death was anticlimactic by comparison. It listed to a halt like a punch-drunk ambull, boosters savaged, its roller becoming caught in the trunk of a particularly wide-bodied tree.

The kill-team roared past, leaving it to its lingering end.

‘We must go back,’ said Asmodael, as though there had been no interruption. ‘We could not catch the mekboss. If we must tarry to put down every one of his minions that pursues us, then whatever chance we have becomes more negligible still.’

Rethek’s gaze flicked, again, to the helmplate cartographic. Its translucency irritated him. Its blinking inconstancy was suddenly an affront. The taste of anger hissed through the recycled air in his helmet. He willed the red blip in the north-east quadrant to obey him, but it was obdurate. It moved itself another pixel away from him.

‘We cannot catch them,’ he conceded.

‘Then we will go back.’

‘We will cut them off.’

With the cartographic hovering above his eyes, he blink-selected a new route. The system disseminated it to his kill-team.

‘Truly, do you mean to damn us,’ said Jeddai, ‘or failing that, simply kill us?’

‘It cannot be done,’ said Asmodael, his voxed tones more measured than the White Scar’s. ‘Not at the speed we would need to intercept the xenos.’

By way of answer, Rethek’s bike roared about a ninety-degree turn. His knee-joint almost touched the ground. The thick tread of his tyre rubber sprayed earth like grapeshot.

Three seconds later, his kill-team followed him.

The bike snarled. The tyres whined for traction. The machine climbed by its fingernails, chewed grit spraying from its mudguards. The front tyre slewed suddenly sideways. The rear tyre bit. Instinct, insight and genhanced cognition turned it into a scrap of solid earth as good for his purposes as a road, and the bike advanced diagonally for about a yard before falling into difficulty again.

Space Marine bikes were rugged off-road machines. They could ford rivers, breach rockcrete barricades, and do it in the most intemperate of planetary environments. Their tyres were solid rubber. Their armour cowlings were over half an inch thick. Simple negligence could not break them. Their engines had been designed to be taken apart and rebuilt by lay hands thousands of miles, or even light years, from the nearest Techmarine. The maintenance they required amounted to little more than an off-hand blessing and the occasional refuelling.

The incline was a challenge for them, even so.

Of them all, only Kharvis took the terrain in his stride. Even the instinctual flair of Asmodael and sarcastic wit of Jeddai had been reduced to gritted teeth, narrowed eyes and long-held breaths, every sense scouring for a workable trail and silently urging their mounts to climb.

‘The ascent levels off before the summit,’ Rethek yelled. With the vox-link, shouting was unnecessary, but the tension in his body demanded it. ‘Another half a mile and we will be as good as there.’

‘We would reach it quicker if we were to walk,’ Asmodael voxed back.

‘And what would you do for the way down, Dark Angel?’ Jeddai snapped. ‘Would you fly?’

‘Keep your focus on the ground in front of you,’ said Rethek. ‘There is less ground ahead of us than we have already covered.’

His gaze floated to the cartographic. He could not keep it from doing so. An obsession. The image was clearer now, the features sharp, the boundaries between them defined. It was the forest. Plant matter was refractive to auspex returns, which had made it difficult to be sure of his scans. There was considerably less of it at this altitude.

‘We are practically there.’

From somewhere above them, the muffled crack of a shot rang out.

The lack of any native life forms to startle orphaned the effect from its cause. The Space Marines barely remarked upon it. The hinterland outposts had been evacuated in favour of defending the major port facilities, and as a consequence the regions had been infested with gretchin. In Astra Militarum parlance they were the shirkers and the skivers, pillaging the unmanned stations while their larger kin sought the glories of war. But there was a method to the orkish way even if, as with all that the greenskins did, it was driven by instinct. The orks would be driven from Acrymorse eventually. Warriors like Rethek would ensure it would be so, although the cost would undoubtedly be great. The presence of so many greenskins in remote outposts such as this was a nuisance now, but come the following phase of the liberation, total extermination, they would be a tactical and logistical nightmare.

Only one needed to escape.

Only one needed to survive and spore.

Yet for all their diminutive stature and craven nature, the gretchin were greenskins still. They could not resist taking a potshot at a passing Space Marine if, in their wicked green hearts, they thought they might get away with it.

‘Did anyone mark its location?’ said Asmodael.

‘No,’ said Kharvis.

It was all he had said in hours and there was no more to follow it. It was enough for them all to know that if the Raptor had yet to do it then it could not be done.

Another shot spanked off Asmodael’s rear cowling. The Dark Angel cursed.

‘Ignore it,’ said Rethek. ‘Their weapons are of too small a calibre.’

‘It is easy to say that when it is not your machine aggrieved.’

‘On some worlds a hit from a gretchin is considered good luck,’ said Jeddai.

‘Enough,’ said Rethek. ‘One last effort!’

His bike gave an almighty roar, tyres shredding the loose earth, its manic burrowing unearthing a tree root. The rear tyre bit, driving the heavy machine upwards. The front tyre gained traction, dragging the rest of the bike up after it. Rethek felt the change in sensation from loose earth to naked rock. Elation jounced through him. The ground ahead of them levelled off, grit and shingle giving way to rugged planes of grippable rock. The trees were self-sown and scarce, undernourished saplings clinging to the rocks where a cleft or a defile allowed a fistful of soil to escape the wind.

Auspectoriae flickered across his helmplate display: windspeed up, temperature down, air thinned. It almost permitted him to feel the alpine gale that the hermetic seals of Mk VII ‘Aquila’ plate and his own half-steel face did not. He looked up. For the first time in a long time he could see the sky. The sun shone, small and white and very bright.

He breathed deep.

Jeddai reared his bike dramatically, skittering across the newly opened terrain like a maddened buck. The ground remained mountainous – broken up by high crags, steep defiles and, where the higher peaks cast their shadows, fingers of dark ice – but compared to the ascent, it was open road.

After a hundred yards Asmodael’s bike coughed. It revved and snarled as the Space Marine worked the throttle, armoured cylinders shuddering as it battled to hold on to its speed.

‘We have a problem,’ he said.

‘You are losing speed.’

‘That last shot must have damaged something.’

‘You attribute much to gretchin marksmanship.’

‘They need only be lucky once.’

‘We cannot slow. Not if we are to intercept our quarry as he circles the mountains.’

‘Then leave me.’

‘No.’

The Dark Angel snarled. ‘If the mission is paramount then you should sacrifice me without question. Instead you hector me. You prevaricate. If your motive is simply not to be in Batarus when the Spirit of Sotha arrives then you should turn back now. Otherwise leave me, for I am slowing you down.’

For a time Rethek was too shocked to answer.

‘I…’ He shook his head. ‘If the death of the ork tyrant demands that sacrifice then yes, I would make it. But that demand has not been made of me yet.’

‘Watch captain,’ voxed Kharvis, already out of sight. ‘Company. West.’

Rethek turned to look over the curved blue slope of his left pauldron, the pitted and scratched symbol of its crimson talon, just as an ork deff kopta crested the canopy of the alpine treeline.

The crude flying machine was a bucket outfitted with rotary wings and tail blades. It looked as though it had been dropped from high altitude and was just managing to scrape aloft, for surely nothing so ramshackle could have defied gravity under its own power. Clad in an oil-stained fleece, aviator cap and goggles, and a pair of huge fingerless gloves, the vehicle’s insane cargo of one bellowed at the array of paddles and levers in front of it.

‘One of the orks must have alerted Ardtoof to our presence.’

‘You give the greenskins too much credit,’ said Asmodael.

‘You give them too little. That is why you were assigned to my command.’

The kopta tilted forwards. Behind it, a squadron of five whirring machines rotared over the crest.

Rethek’s bike screeched into an evasive turn as the first kopta over the ridge opened fire with a sound like a man shaking out a can of nails. Stubbers underslung from the kopta’s box nose blazed. There was nothing sophisticated about their munitions, no micro-rocketry, armour-piercing adamantium tip or mass-reactive detonators for the orks. Their guns spat nuggets of iron, bronze and lead, but in quantity enough to trouble a warrior in Gravis Mk X.

Its raking bullet hose went through rock like a plough turning over clay soil. Rock became gravel. Gravel became shrapnel. Shrapnel sprayed the two bikes with micro-impacts as they slewed and skidded around the kopta’s fire arcs. The flying machine thundered overhead, its elevation too great for the fixed forward position of the bikes’ twin-linked bolters to target. Instead, Rethek aimed with his bolt pistol and squeezed off three quick shots. The explosive shells blazed across the basic welding of its fuselage, but did no damage

‘We cannot outrun an ork kopta,’ voxed Asmodael, as it banked, fighting every law of motion to come about for another pass. ‘Leave me. Prove to me that I fall with honour and I will hold the greenskins here.’

‘No.’

Rethek and Asmodael ducked low to their mounts, sheltering behind the protection of their bikes’ forward cowls as improvised bullets sprayed over their heads.

Another kopta buzzed them, its primary rotor casting a blurry, predatory shadow over the broken ground as it moved. Two each split off to go left and right, easily outpacing the struggling bikes.

‘Pull in to me,’ said Rethek.

The Space Marine drew in until the two bikes raced alongside one another. The combined howl of the engines was immense. Bullets pinged off their body armour and fairings.

‘Take my steering bar.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Just do it.’

Asmodael reached out with his left hand and took Rethek’s right-hand bar. Rethek unlocked his boots from the magnetised footrests. Drawing his left knee as high as the articulation joints of Mk VII would allow, he set his boot heel on his saddle and pushed off with conviction, throwing himself across the three-foot span between the two bikes to land expertly in Asmodael’s saddle. The other bike skidded, struggling under its doubled burden, before Asmodael could bring it back under his command. With his left hand alone, he kept control of Rethek’s machine at the same time.

‘What in Terra–’

‘Switch, brother.’

‘We are moving at two hundred miles per hour.’ He ducked as a bullet spray scraped across his cowl hood. ‘And under fire.’

‘Jump.’

With a muttered oath, Asmodael flung himself across. For all his many faults, the prodigal of the Kimmeria was a natural rider. He took both bars of the swerving bike and glanced back.

‘Can you afford me five minutes?’ Rethek asked.

‘You will have as many as you need,’ said Asmodael. For a moment only, Rethek entertained the notion there was admiration in the Dark Angel’s words.

Asmodael swung his bars and swept left, shooting skyward with his sidearm and drawing the squadron of pursuing koptas unerringly to him.

Leaving the steering to his augmetic systems, Rethek leant in towards his borrowed machine. Unlike the revered but essentially mass-produced hardware of a Codex Chapter, the machines of the Deathwatch were signature pieces, each drawn from disparate armouries and often bound to a single warrior. Asmodael’s mount was outwardly similar to his own, but there were differences. It was lighter, lacking Rethek’s engine modifications and up-armouring. The steering had a tendency to drift. Asmodael was a more reactive rider. His style necessitated a lighter turn.

With one arm he reached down over the bike’s perforated side-fairing.

The ground thundered along, inches from his faceplate, jagged, as lethal at that speed as an adamantium saw. The heat and the noise put out by his spinning tyres could have powered the void shield of a gunship.

By the touch of metal upon metal he inspected the damage. He traced the smooth outline of a bullet hole. Asmodael had been unlucky. The shot had struck his bike precisely where the armour had been weakened in a prior engagement. He withdrew his finger and it came away oily. He cursed under his breath. The shot had also penetrated the armoured jacket enclosing the promethium tank and the bike was bleeding fuel. He pulled himself upright and checked the gauge. The needle had dropped an entire quadrant since he had looked away to assay the damage.

With a throatier curse, he thumped the dashboard.

‘I cannot fix it,’ he yelled into the vox. ‘This bike is going to bleed out in minutes.’

‘There is a logging station on the descent,’ voxed Kharvis. ‘The tree cover should force the ork flyers to land and buy us time for repairs. Can you make it that far?’

Rethek recalled the cartographic to prominence in his display.

‘It will require some coaxing. But yes. Yes, it can be done.’

The Space Marine bikes pulled in, growling, sputtering, heavy tyres crunching over ersatz weed-suppressant gravel.

The logging station was typical of backwater Imperial design: a roofed forecourt strewn with litter and the green stubble of early pioneer grasses. Shed-like buildings flanked the central square. The forest was in the intermediate stages of reclaiming the corrugated metal. The chemical tang of antiplant on the air was toothless and fading, overtaken by the more bestial odours of occupation. Most of the buildings were designated as storage. The station’s operations were routine enough to have been largely automated – a complement of about ten was sufficient oversight for the industrial-grade servitors that performed the bulk of the labour.

The servitors, at least, remained dutifully at their posts. Even to an augmented warrior accustomed to the scale of Imperial machinery, the logging servitors were daunting. Their scale was monstrous. The silhouettes they cast were either human or not, depending on the whim of the light. There were human torsos machined into the bodies of Uranus-class heavy tractors. Withered bodies hung, scarecrow-like, from the cradle gibbets of crane arms the size of Imperial Knights, limbs severed at the first joints and stuffed with fibre bundles. Others stood solemnly around the forecourt where they had been left, sleeping the dreamless sleep of the brain-dead. They had been bulked up with steel plates, muscle grafts and hormone baths, built by gross artifice into something approaching the muscle mass and crude hitting power of a Space Marine.

In place of their hands were massive chainfists, three times the length of any weapon that a Deathwatch in Furor-pattern Terminator plate might wield. The teeth were blunted from careless woodwork. Several showed damage where someone, or something, had tried, and failed, to remove the chainfists from their shielded casings. Moss grew over their flesh, but there was little of the simpleton graffiti that was scrawled over the rest of the forecourt. They stared sightlessly, their blunted minds uncaring, hearts beating once every minute or so as they waited for an order. Any order.

Jeddai leant his bike against a structural member and dismounted. He lifted the saddle, unclipping an Artifex-pattern bolter from the storage compartment there and drawing it to his chest. Kharvis feathered his throttle, performing a wider loop of the compound’s outbuildings before driving back in from the opposite approach. Asmodael allowed his bike to glide before dismounting, drawing a short blade from a slot in his side-fairing to complement his bolt pistol.

Rethek checked his fuel gauge. He patted his wheezing mount’s cowl.

‘You did well.’

He nudged back the kickstand with the toe of his boot, and then dismounted. Checking over his weapon, he slotted home a fresh magazine, then slid the bolt pistol into the magnetised strip-holster on his thigh, ready. He turned to Jeddai as the White Scar walked towards him.

‘Take Asmodael and perform a sweep of the buildings. Kill any gretchin you find hiding there. Any fuel you find, take it.’

‘Yes, captain.’

Relaying the instruction to Asmodael via a jerk of the head, the two warriors crossed one another, heading towards opposite ends of the compound. Rethek squatted by his bike, listening only as Jeddai kicked in a light alloy door.

Bolter fire boomed from within the metal shed. High-voiced xenos screamed as they died.

Rethek ignored them.

He reached for his equipment harness and unhooked a spray canister. Pressing the nozzle to the bullet hole in the side-fairing, he squeezed the trigger. Sealant frothed up from the bike’s innards, effectively patching over the hidden damage to the promethium tank. He withdrew the canister and loosely holstered it. With an air hose he blasted spilled oil and unset ceramite from the outer bullet hole. This too, he holstered. Drawing a pair of callipers, he measured and cut two strips from a roll of magnetic tape and crossed them over the bullet hole. This, he then sprayed liberally over with sealant until it set.

Kharvis crossed the forecourt towards him as he finished. He held a compact Hesh-pattern bolter, modified with heat scope and silencer, to his black plastron.

‘The koptas,’ he said in his usual clipped manner. He nodded in the direction from which they had come. ‘The forest will have forced them down. Half a mile. West. It is downhill all the way and the trees are thin. It will not take the orks long to get here on foot.’

‘Then we will hurry.’

Rethek lifted his saddle and drew a long rubberised tube from the stowage compartment. He fed one end into the fuel inlet. The other he passed to Kharvis.

‘The White Scar will find no promethium that the greenskins have not already used.’

‘I know,’ said Rethek. ‘Take this to the lumberer servitor.’ Rethek gestured to the chainsaw-limbed servitor that he had pulled in alongside. ‘There will be a release mechanism in the forearm case.’

‘I see it.’

‘Release it.’

The Raptor did so. A small flap hinged back from the servitor’s iron-sheathed forearm. The yellow-black hazard striping of the exterior was tarred black on the inside. The oily scent of low-grade promethium roughly assailed the Space Marines’ acute sense of smell. Space Marine bikes, however, were famously undiscerning.

Kharvis gave a short, wry laugh.

‘I know the greenskins,’ Rethek said, simply.

A bullet punched through the rockcrete column behind him before the Raptor could speak again. And after the first gunshot report, the roar.

More evolved weapon than war cry. It was as horns to a bull grox. Venom to a snake. From the deep chest of a solitary ork it was terrifying. Delivered from the throats of many, its power to terrorise was amplified a thousandfold. Even a Space Marine could feel it, though it was not fear to him but a kind of fear-shaped unease. The wariness of a predator confronted by another of its kind – one with thicker limbs and a mightier bite.

‘Waaaaaaggh!’ They barrelled out of the trees, favouring axes, not bothering with their guns.

Kharvis blazed into them, full-auto, full spread. An ork soaked up ten rounds in its chest before going down. More charged from the treeline. The Raptor shifted his aim, fired again, tight bursts illuminating his beaked helmet. Staccato shadows flew across the forecourt ceiling.

‘The siphon,’ Rethek barked.

Firing one-handed, Kharvis slid the promethium tube into the servitor’s chainfist fuel reservoir. A dark red liquid slopped from the mouth of the tube, spilling onto the ground before he could return it to the inlet.

‘Cover me,’ Rethek said.

‘For how long?’

‘A minute. Maybe two.’

‘Consider it done.’

Kharvis sidestepped slowly towards the cover of the rockcrete column, firing from the chest as he went. Ork bullets chipped the rockcrete where he walked. They hammered metal, hazed the air with micro-shrapnel and a craze of secondary ricochets. When it came to firearms, orks appreciated only three things: size, noise and rate of fire.

Kharvis’ boltgun roared its response to them. The ork in his sights roared even louder as sequential explosions threw its chest wide. The ork staggered on through the explosive gut punches, organs pasted over its thighs and chest as it raised its axe.

Without lifting his gaze from his work, Rethek drew his bolt pistol and fired. The bolt-round took the ork’s head cleanly off. The mutilated heap of green muscle and offal collapsed, finally, a yard from Kharvis’ boots.

The Raptor grunted.

‘You are welcome,’ said Rethek, continuing to shepherd the promethium trickle into the bike’s reservoir.

A second bolter opened up from further away. This one had a deeper bark than Kharvis’ compact. Artifex-pattern. Jeddai.

An ork strapped with bandoliers charged at Kharvis. Despite the armament it carried stuffed in its belts, it wielded nothing but its own clenched fists. Kharvis stepped behind the pillar, meaning to circle and flank.

The ork was not deceived. There was an explosion of rockcrete powder as it went through the column head first. Kharvis swung his gun up, a single round going through the ork’s chest before the grey-dusted giant barrelled into the Space Marine as he had the pillar.

Rethek grimaced. He could not help him.

The promethium tube gurgled empty. Switching the Guardian bolt pistol to his off-hand, he rose from behind the bike. Firing semi-independently of his body’s right side, he crossed to the lumberer servitor. He actuated the release flap of the second arm, then transferred the tubing to the new reservoir. The bolt pistol flipped to the other hand. He turned back to the bike and resumed firing. Mass-reactive explosions jigged through an ork cunning enough to wait until Rethek’s back was turned before charging. They were coming from everywhere, not just west. Far more than the half a dozen frustrated deff kopta pilots he had been expecting to face. Bullets and shells flew everywhere and stung what they hit. Metal, ash, dust, fire smoke. The air was dizzy.

He had been expecting to have more time.

Ramming the bolt pistol back into its magnetic sleeve, he squatted down, repeated the vacuum trick with the inlet hose until the tube again ran red.

‘Asmodael,’ he said, speaking into the vox as he slid the tube back into the bike’s reservoir tank. When it was done, he rose. Releasing the pistol again, he drew it, bracing it this time in a firm, two-handed grip.

With super-cogitator precision he started shooting. Single shots plunged through ork flesh, detonating in the soft tissue within. Few were kill-shots. Deliberately so. No warrior was so skilled that he could reliably put down a charging ork with one shot. What he delivered instead were the most efficient maiming blows that he could, throwing furious orks to the ground for priceless moments, sparing seconds, ammunition and perhaps lives.

Asmodael charged from the storage shed, lashing out with his combat blade and firing short bursts from his bolt pistol as he crossed the melee.

‘Take your mount,’ said Rethek.

Asmodael bowed his head, before swinging his leg over the saddle and ramming his sword back into its sleeve.

The Dark Angel opened up the throttle. The bike revved. The back wheel screeched on gravel. The ignition drew the attention of an ork, who bellowed a challenge, smashing its two axes together, just as Asmodael’s lurching bike butted it to the ground and ran it over.

Rethek mounted his own bike and gunned the engine, then hauled it around forty degrees. There was a burly ork in his sights, so huge it had its own geology. Muscle groups like mountain chains rose and fell across its back as it pounded a Space Marine beneath its mass into the ground. Rethek triggered the bike’s cowl-mounted bolters. He would never confess to the attachment, but he had missed his own machine. He had missed its firepower.

The twin-linked bolter wracked the ork’s upper body with explosions, punching fist-sized holes through its torso. The ork shuddered and finally died.

A dazed-looking Kharvis struggled upright. He was alive, but only because he was a Space Marine, and a Space Marine was almost impossible to kill. His helmet was broken. Blood and cranial juices seeped through an unhealthy gauze of bone, cracked ceramite and dura mater. His plastron was crumpled on one side, almost certainly crushing a lung. The sucking noise of his breathing dragged through the kill-team vox. Nevertheless, he climbed onto his bike and threw a nod of gratitude towards Rethek.

Unseen, Rethek smiled.

Jeddai sprinted from an improvised firebase in the portico shed, firing from the hip as he leapt, full tilt, into the saddle. His engine was running before the orks he had been shooting could appreciate the fact that he had moved. Tyre rubber screeched on gravel and the White Scar roared after Asmodael’s machine, making the bullets that struck off its rear cowling look slow.

Ignoring them all, Rethek opened the throttle.

Primaris Chaplain Brutus Galvo descended the ramp of the Corvus Blackstar Spirit of Sotha. The metal, meant for earlier iterations of transhuman in less robust wargear than his, bent under the tread of his Gravis-pattern Mk X armour. The void-black warplate was more elaborate than he would have chosen for himself, but gothic ostentation was the foible of the age. A golden halo stood aloft of the high gorget of black ceramite that ridged the back of his neck, framing his dour features in illumination. The Ultima of Macragge emblazoned the royal blue of his right shoulder panel. In spite of this he had never been an Ultramarine, except in name. And in his hearts, in the distant memory of a forgotten youth. He had been seconded directly from his former brotherhood in the Unnumbered Sons of Guilliman, diverted from the last glories of the Indomitus Crusade to serve the Imperial Regent in the Deathwatch.

These disappointments, after ten thousand years of loyal service, might have embittered a lesser man. But Brutus was not a lesser man. No sign of misgiving disfigured the unsmiling visage that Watch Fort Ulysses had come to respect over the prior decade and a half. In the Deathwatch, all brotherhoods were itinerant, all warriors equal in their dissociation from birth world, culture, time – each an orphan adopted by duty.

Brutus had devoted himself to his.

Two strides saw him to the foot of the ramp. The shattered cityscape of Batarus spread out in a three hundred and sixty-degree vista of wanton destruction. Walls had been toppled, buildings flattened. The great archival palace, the Apex Administrata, too formidable a bastion to be torn down so easily, continued to burn even two weeks standard after the city’s sacking.

The orks were simple, but quick to learn. They had discovered that vellum, papyrus and magnetic storage tape burned very well indeed.

What remained of the city had been vandalised and graffitied in inimical greenskin style. In spite of the blanket destruction that had been meted upon it, however, the city’s orderly outline remained very much intact – the angular demarcations of pre-existing buildings, the bisecting lines of roads.

Typically orkish effort, Brutus thought with disdain. Destructive, but incomplete.

The job was sloppy. It had been rushed, its instigators impatient to move on, to wreak further havoc on pastures new. Humanity would return. It would rebuild and refortify. Its ingrained stubbornness would be the xenos’ downfall.

He looked around.

After the rampages of the orks, he was the highest man-made edifice within twelve miles, his view unimpeded in any direction. He stood two feet taller than his genetic predecessors, the Space Marines, and towered like a living mountain over the mortal Administratum attachés that had come to check his credentials at the landing zone.

They cowered before him. Sheer inhuman presence wiped pre-prepared statements of greeting, little modified in thousands of years, from their minds.

‘Where is Watch Captain Timor Rethek?’ he said.

‘N-n-not here, my lord.’

‘Has he been contacted as per my order?’

‘Forgive us, lord. Our transmitters were damaged when the city fell. He is out of our range – within the radius of the orks’ signal jamming – and has been for over a day.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘In pursuit of the ork war-chief, my lord.’

Brutus nodded grimly. He did not smile. It was possible that he had once, a child growing to boyhood amongst the marbled colonnades of Magna Macragge Civitas. The thought of doing so in this benighted epoch only made him angry. It would be an insult to the glories that had once brought that child joy.

‘Which way?’ he said.

The attaché pointed towards the distant crag of mountains.

Without a word he turned, and marched back up the Spirit’s ramp.

‘My suit auspex is picking up a powerful airborne return,’ said Asmodael. Despite being less than a yard away he continued to resort to vox. On open road, unbroken by forest, the noise of their machines was incredible. ‘Intercept heading, from west.’

‘It is the Spirit of Sotha,’ Rethek voxed back. ‘My systems detected her five minutes ago.’

‘Have they attempted to make contact?’

‘Impossible to say.’

‘Then we should wait for them until they do.’

‘Turn back?’ yelled Jeddai. ‘Now?’

‘We proceed,’ said Rethek. ‘Killing the warlord will blunt their offensive to the north and avenge our brother. I will not see the enemy slip from my grasp this close to the end.’

The road they had joined was winding, but well surfaced and, until recently, maintained. To the left was a sheer precipice. Craggy cliffs abutted it, and then, beneath them and beyond, the endless uniformity of tended forest. To their right was the more sparsely forested track from which they had descended.

Rethek’s plan to intercept the ork mekboss as he rounded the mountain would have worked, but the delay at the logging station had cost them. The mekboss and his convoy had already passed a little under a mile ahead. Were it not for the din made by their own bikes, Rethek would almost certainly have been able to hear their engines from here. Ardtoof’s augmented vehicles were fast, but a convoy moved at the pace of its slowest vehicle, and Rethek knew that he could tempt them to slow even further.

Rethek fired his bolt pistol into the air and instructed his kill-team to do the same. For several minutes they thundered beneath the smoke of their discharging weapons, Jeddai yelling and whooping, like outlaws riding down a train.

It would not be enough to persuade all of the orks ahead to turn and fight, perhaps not even Ardtoof himself, but enough of them. Few orks could resist a fight once it had been offered.

The plan was not without its downsides: the mekboss could be in no doubt now that he was under attack.

‘Final weapons check,’ said Rethek. ‘All weapons loaded.’

The vox picked up the rattle and click of switched magazines. The Space Marines ran gauntleted fingers over grenade belts, reinforcing muscle memory for speed in combat, reholstered their loaded pistols, then leant forwards to run spot checks on their cowl bolters. All done as their bikes raced into battle.

Rethek watched Kharvis.

The side of the Raptor’s face was a scab where the helmet had cracked. A knot of gelled blood and broken ceramite, it looked more like something dragged from the bottom of the sea than a warrior of the Emperor. The eye, embedded in a four-inch thickness of scab tissue, was glazed with sus-an secretions. His physiology’s autonomic regulators were keeping steady vigil over the warrior’s vitality, and had clearly judged it beyond its own gift to repair. His body prepared itself for protective hibernation, but he was resisting.

He was resisting for the mission. Rethek mentally corrected himself. He was resisting for Rethek.

Kharvis fumbled briefly with the magazine for his sidearm. It was large, meant for use by warriors in Terminator armour. He rammed it home, completing his checks only a few seconds behind his brothers.

‘I see them,’ called Jeddai.

The White Scar had the sharp eyes of his genetic sire. His gaze was fixed on the road, their disagreements forgotten now their prey was in sight and his bloodlust stoked.

A rumbling battlewagon appeared as the bikes took the bend in the road. It looked more like a fortress than a vehicle – thirty feet long and twenty-five wide, its metrics just shy of the official classification of a super-heavy. Its sixteen enormous wheels were each wider than the outstretched arms of a man, its tyres thicker than the span of his hand. It rode on a low carriage. Sparks screeched from its underside every time the road dipped even slightly from true, much to the raucous approval of all aboard. The burn marks it left on the road behind it were as good as a barcode. Jag-toothed battlements painted with glyphs and strung with totems ringed its high sides, upon which orks waved axes and shouted boisterously. Others gripped pintle-mounted weapons and, overcome by the excitement, blazed away in all directions while their companions egged them on. Towards the centre of the wagon, three rectangular towers fought for height. These boasted heavier weapons, manned by orks of more formidable discipline.

In the highest tower stood their leader.

He was an animal colossus, slabbed in armour that shuddered and barked like a mad dog. The bent saw that gave him his name replaced his lower jaw with an underbite of rusted steel. A pair of ruby-red bionic optics glared from his brutish face. Fixed by chains and rivets to his backplate was a power plant that had once belonged to the armour of an Adeptus Astartes.

It was this which gave Rethek a true sense of the ork’s scale. He was almost twice the size of the warrior that the plant had been intended for. The mekboss had since ‘improved’ on its operation, retrofitting the Imperial technology with belts and chimneys and painting it red. It belched up a smoke ring as he bellowed down at his boyz. A cavalcade of gretchin buglers and banner wavers parroted their boss’ orders. One particularly enthusiastic gretchin scrambled up onto the tower’s battlements to wave a giant red flag bearing the ork’s personal glyph.

Spanna Ardtoof.

In response to his boisterously relayed instructions, a previously hidden truck swung in behind the battlewagon. It swayed perilously on its chassis, its open back massively overloaded with hooting ork warriors. They were armoured haphazardly, but every one was a gnarled and muscled brute kitted out for close combat. They would be Ardtoof’s personal entourage, Rethek assumed – those warriors too big and too violent to be controlled unless directly in their boss’ line of sight. It would make getting to Ardtoof more difficult, but in doing so allow Rethek to eliminate every ork strong enough to potentially succeed him at the same time.

Clinging to the back of the truck in something that fell between a conventional cupola and a cage was the ork who had drawn the short straw. Fighting against the rucking vehicle, he manhandled a powerful harpoon launcher into position. An unconventional weapon to human eyes, it was intended to ensnare enemy vehicles and then haul them in to be boarded and captured. It was fixed to the back of the truck on a bipod, its threat restricted to a relatively narrow arc of fire directly to the rear of the vehicle.

Rethek made the addendum to his data before formalising his plan of attack.

‘Forgive me my doubts,’ voxed Asmodael.

‘There is nothing to forgive,’ Rethek grunted. ‘Doubt was logical. I would have doubted you had our positions been reversed.’

‘That is just it,’ said Asmodael quietly. ‘When word came to us of your brothers’ betrayal… I was angry not because they fell. I was angry because if evil could befall them then it could befall my own brothers. Perhaps the day will come when I learn that it has. Who knows what madness reigns beyond the Rift? Could it have been us, if we were there with them instead of here? Or would we have proven ourselves true? Might we even have saved them?’

‘Hypotheticals, all. Our loyalty will be proven in battle,’ said Rethek. ‘Jeddai, Asmodael, go right.’

‘Yes, captain.’

‘Yes, captain!’

‘Kharvis, follow me.’

Tyres shrieked as the bikes’ formation split into two.

Rethek’s bike roared as he gave it throttle, accelerating towards the truck. The ork in the rear cupola grew massive as the distance between them closed, jigging from foot to foot and gesturing lewdly with its harpoon launcher.

Suddenly, Rethek swung to the left. Kharvis flashed after him.

The ork bellowed in frustration. Rethek looked back. The orks packed into the truck were practically rioting as the Space Marines flashed by. Asmodael and Jeddai took potshots with their sidearms. The frustrated greenskins returned fire with yelled obscenities and threatening gestures.

The driver, a mound of muscle draped in a ripped leather coat, gave a roar and spun its steering wheel violently to the left. The truck lurched sideways. It missed Kharvis by inches, only barely avoiding a tip over the cliff-edge itself. The back wheel spun over emptiness, the orks crowded into the back bellowing in thrill-hungry mania as the driver chewed through a selection of gears before the truck was skidding after the Raptor again.

Over a shriek of popping rivets, the cupola ork wrenched its harpoon launcher from the bipod. It swung it to take aim at Kharvis and fired.

The harpoon leapt ahead of the swerving truck, whistling as it let out its chain. The ork bellowed and punched the air, sensing the direct hit moments before the harpoon split the Raptor’s bike in two. Kharvis flew over his cowl shield and rolled pell-mell across the road, the remains of his bike skewered to the surface by ten feet of steel.

‘Kharvis!’ cried Asmodael.

‘We will honour him with a victory,’ said Jeddai.

‘The Spirit of Sotha cannot be far now. They will see to the proper return of his progenoids to his world.’

The ork gunner’s triumphant yelling ceased abruptly as the truck ran over the chain. It yanked taut, ripping the cupola from the back and dragging it over the crowded vehicle, spilling warriors over the side. The truck bucked as it ran the cupola over, wheels spinning aimlessly for several seconds before it crashed onto its side. It skidded some distance before the driver was able to clamber out. The ork stood on the road by its wrecked vehicle, firing after the receding Space Marines with a block pistol.

Rethek turned away.

The battlewagon loomed.

Furious, Mekboss Ardtoof took a pintle-mounted blaster cannon – his powered claw showing surprising manual dexterity – and unleashed a storm of heavy fire. Rethek swerved to avoid it. The bullet spray chased him.

‘Get in close,’ he voxed. ‘Inside their fire arcs.’

Smaller mounts opened up as he raced in closer, orks and gretchin opening fire with a profusion of handheld weapons. The mekboss’ battlewagon was both larger and more heavily armed than the escort truck. It was a different order of proposition altogether. Shots banged off bike and armour. Plenty of them penetrated. A wireframe dummy fizzed across his helmplate overlay, armour panels turning from green to amber to red. Stabs of organic pain performed a similar function where crude ork munitions overwhelmed his wargear to damage flesh. The instinct of three centuries of mounted combat was to drop behind the cover of his bike’s raised cowling. Instead, he absorbed the incoming punishment himself, trusting his own armour and superior frame to shield the bike a moment longer.

He silenced the symphony of alarms and opened a vox-link to Asmodael.

‘What is your bike’s status?’

‘Your repairs are holding. She is in this fight yet.’

‘Krak the wheels, my brothers. Drive this behemoth from the road.’

Rethek pulled a krak grenade from his belt as he raced in alongside the rumbling tank. He waited a second, the grenade primed in his hand, the roar of goliath wheels effectively deafening him by driving his helm’s audial dampeners to their maximum. Then he tossed the grenade under the battlewagon’s armour skirt. Another second later and there was the hiss of an implosion.

The wheel nearest to him shredded. Those either side of it buckled like cartons underfoot. Something vital popped in the undercarriage, and brake fluid and crude promethium sprayed out as if from a hose. From the opposite flank, Asmodael and Jeddai’s bombs were inflicting similar carnage.

The battlewagon began to slew across the road. Its tail crept out as its forward half bled speed. Rethek smiled to himself, seeing the Universal Laws of the Omnissiah so beautifully laid out as the battlewagon reached a critical breakdown between mass and momentum. With its wheels parallel to its direction of skid, the battlewagon turned over. It was too massive for anything spectacular.

Like a void ship entering the atmosphere of a gravity well, the battlewagon found itself suddenly accountable for its mass. The road beneath it became a crater. Weapon hard points snapped and armour plates collapsed. The wreck shrieked further down the road, obliterating battlements, towers and guns, and leaving dozens of green-black streaks to mark its passage.

The Space Marine bikes skidded to a halt, watching the battlewagon shudder to a final rest. Jeddai delivered a ‘whoop’ of celebration.

Rethek was about to order them all to turn back when a shriek of tortured metal drew his attention back to the road. A piece of vehicle wreckage roughly mass-equivalent to three Space Marine bikes rolled aside as Mekboss Spanna Ardtoof pulled himself out of his battlewagon.

His armour was battered. One of his exhausts was bent and belching smoke at a weird angle, making him bunch up his already irritated face and cough. His cheek was scratched. One optic glitched. His bionic jaw was dented. A snapped banner pole had gone about two feet into the back of his neck, to no obviously detrimental effect.

With a growl that Rethek took to be an insult to the valorous spirits of the Space Marines’ weaponry, the ork staggered towards them.

‘Fire,’ said Rethek.

The three bikes opened fire with their twin-linked bolters. Shells sparked off the ork’s armour. All the while the huge greenskin waded through it, muttering and complaining as though he had stepped outside in the rain and now his boots were wet. He built up speed, slowly cranking up some kind of in-built dynamo that in turn threw a buzzing power field over his bulk.

Rethek drew his sidearm and added its fire to that of his bike.

‘Reverse,’ he said.

They backed up slowly, maintaining the gap between them as they unloaded their bolters into the mekboss. The field was intermittent – enough to cook off two rounds in three before they could dent his armour. He kept coming. The organic upper half of the ork’s bestial face creased into what might have been a grin. He pincered his power claw. Ork sign language.

Rethek frowned, and then braked. Asmodael and Jeddai rolled a few yards back before realising that he had stopped.

‘What are you doing?’ said Asmodael.

‘It is time to stop.’

The mekboss grew gigantic as he approached. The juddering output of his armour’s power plant made Rethek’s teeth ache and the triplet service studs in his skull shudder. Even the bike beneath him trembled like a skittish mount as if it, unlike him, could feel fear. Cackling, the ork raised his power claw and brought it smashing down. Rethek threw himself from the saddle, rolling across the ground as the mekboss ended the proud machine. Energy-sheathed digits gouged deep into the bike’s innards, ripping out engine components and internal housings in a flurry of oiled metal and sparks. The combination lit, a fierce yellow flame sleeving the mekboss’ arm.

The ork frowned as though this were irritating and paused to slap at the fire with his unaugmented hand. Almost the moment he stopped moving, his power field spasmed and fell.

Rethek smiled coolly and fired. Asmodael and Jeddai added their fire to his, bolt shells ripping pieces from the ork’s powered armour. He roared, staggered by the impacts, raising his claw and managing two tottering steps towards Rethek before a blast from Jeddai’s twin-link blew off his iron jaw and swayed him down to his knees. Even from there, it took a frightening amount of firepower to make him die.

Rethek took a step towards him and lowered his aim a fraction. From point-blank range, he emptied his pistol’s magazine into the mekboss’ bionic eye.

With a last grunt, the ork slumped to the road.

Panting, more with emotion than exertion, for his genhanced physiology could easily handle the latter, Rethek allowed the spent pistol to fall from his hands. He looked back over his shoulder. The survivors of the escort truck – a first estimate told him that almost all of them had survived – were just coming back into view. They were running, axes waving, yelling their brutish cries.

‘Your weapon,’ voxed Asmodael.

‘I am out,’ said Rethek. ‘It should be I who apologises for doubting you. I have led you into damnation after all.’

The Dark Angel removed his helmet.

‘Never. Brother.’

Their vox spat into life.

‘Kill-Team Reth… lain Brutus Galvo… in… ately.’

Rethek looked up.

His helmet’s auto-senses filtered out the glare. The Spirit of Sotha was a dark cross, the Corvus Blackstar’s distinctive anhedral profile stark against the pale sky. His lenses tracked his eye movements and zoomed. It was coming in hard and fast from the west, its agility in flight belying its apparently poor aerodynamics and impressive durability. An unwanted escort of ork deff koptas swarmed it, their bullets raking its sides.

The Spirit’s weapons loadout was for ground assault rather than aerial combat, and with its thick armour it ignored the koptas like the nuisances they were. Twin-linked assault cannons mounted in the nose mowed through the ork infantry charging up the road. The hurricane bolter on the canopy opened up for good measure, shredding the greenskins in a maelstrom of lead and thunder. Angling its boosters for vertical lift, the Corvus Blackstar came into land, blasting shell casings and lighter debris to the roadside. Its hurricane bolter tracked to target the koptas. One of the ramshackle flying machines was careless enough to stray into its fire arc and was shredded for its trouble, making the brief freefall as a fireball before exploding on impact with the ground.

Again, Rethek’s vox buzzed and hissed. This time no words made it through.

‘Did you catch that?’ said Jeddai.

‘The signal jamming must be originating from something on the mekboss himself,’ Asmodael mused. ‘It is exceptionally strong here.’

‘It does not matter,’ said Rethek. ‘We all know that their orders are to return with me to Watch Fort Ulysses that I might be judged for the sins of my brothers.’

Jeddai raised his gaze from his bike’s bolters. His lip climbed, lifting his pale moustache to frame a smirk. ‘I do not presume to guess my orders, watch-captain. Do you?’

A hundred yards down the road, the Spirit of Sotha touched down, crushing corpses, wreckage and cratered road in an adamantium embrace.

‘Take my bike,’ said Jeddai. ‘Resume the hunt.’

‘I cannot outrun this disgrace forever,’ said Rethek.

‘Only the Emperor is forever.’ Jeddai’s grin settled into its weathered frown. ‘We can look forward only until we die.’

Rethek smiled.

‘Thank you. Brothers.’

The Spirit of Sotha’s ramp descended and the gigantic figure of a Primaris Chaplain in Mk X Gravis armour emerged. Two Deathwatch veterans descended with him, the roofs of their helmets level only with his pauldrons’ filigree, but they remained at the foot of the ramp while the Chaplain walked towards the bikers alone.

Rethek tensed. He was still not accustomed to the size of the Primaris Marines. He had fought the Imperium’s wars for almost four hundred years. He did not like the idea of being superseded.

Overtaken.

‘Brutus Galvo,’ he said, when the Chaplain offered no greeting of his own.

The Primaris Marine nodded. His face was unsmiling, stern, patriarchal in spite of its youth. In relativistic terms, at least. ‘You know why I am here,’ he said.

‘I do.’

‘And yet you ran.’

‘I did my duty.’

Galvo glanced at Asmodael and Jeddai. They were as tense as birds of prey. Rethek looked towards the two veterans standing by the idling Corvus.

‘Am I going to need them, captain?’ said Galvo.

Rethek forced himself to relax.

‘No. Mekboss Ardtoof will not be rejoining his warband before it reaches Sargatha. His lieutenants are slain. His army will fragment.’ He removed his helmet. His face was a hundred hues of pale, a stretched patchwork of synthetic flesh grafts of varying ages. He closed his eye, powered down his optic, and took what he expected to be his last breath of Acrymorse’s forest air. ‘Our duty here is done.’

Rethek walked onto the Spirit of Sotha under his own power.

THE LAST WORD

Phil Kelly

T’AU ORBITAL STATION AM’DANIS
ATAZUGA (GAS GIANT)

‘Of course this is tantamount to suicide,’ said Braejac, the Fenrisian’s canines glinting at the corners of his lips. ‘That’s what makes it so interesting. Does your beloved Codex not approve?’

‘Don’t take the bait, Kolos.’ Our squad leader, Orendu of the Obsidian Glaives, cast me a warning glance before turning to the Space Wolf. ‘Not helpful, Brother Braejac. You know what the Novamarines think of high-risk strategies. Besides, talk like that and you may scare our hosts in the Aleph Non.’

‘Can they hear us?’ I said.

‘It’s possible. The vox-link has a degree of bleed.’

Va’kaan nodded in affirmation from the cockpit of the Corvus Blackstar. ‘Humans,’ he said, his tone dry. ‘Easily discombobulated.’

Of all of us, Va’kaan was always readiest to point out the differences between Space Marines and the unwashed ranks of the citizenry we protected. He’d leave it all behind if he could, swap his flesh for metal in a heartbeat. It was not uncommon amongst the Iron Hands. Still, his augmetics made him an incredible pilot.

Our Blackstar, the Onyx Fist, nestled in the larger craft’s belly like a hard black insect, ready to eject and take flight as soon as our ruse was uncovered. With Va’kaan at the helm when we finally made our attack run, the chances of us reaching our destination were high enough to be worth the gamble.

A reedy voice came from the vox-relay – one of the xenos species’ pilot caste asking our hosts for their credentials. ‘Gue’vesa Mining Corps vessel Aleph Non, designation Sui Mal’caor,’ it said, ‘report intent in the name of the T’au’va.’ The alien’s accented Low Gothic held a hint of accusation that made my skin crawl.

‘One moment,’ came the voice of Viktram Ndule, the freighter’s ex-gue’vesa shipmaster. Ndule was a traitor twice over, having betrayed the Imperium first and the T’au Empire second, but he had proven very useful. ‘Transmitting credentials now, honoured Kor.’

A brief burst of static reached us in the Onyx Fist. For a long moment, no one spoke. We were the dagger hidden in the tome, and the longer we remained undetected, the greater our chances were.

‘Bastard xenos, playing at being civilised,’ muttered Caegros, unable to stand the silence any longer. ‘They pretend to have a code of honour. The worst kind of falsehood.’

The axeman hated the t’au more than any of us. He had good reason to, given that his Chapter suffered over ninety per cent losses during the catastrophic Battle of Vior’los. He and Orendu had plenty in common, the captain being one of only a few Obsidian Glaives left after their planet was scoured by the orks of the Red Waaagh!. The fact that Orendu and Caegros had not already returned to their respective home worlds was testament to their Chapters’ dedication to the cause. That, or a burning need for revenge.

‘Gue’vesa craft Aleph Non,’ crackled the vox-link, ‘with all respect due to a valued member of the T’au’va, these are outdated credentials. Kindly report intent, or we will be forced to consider neutralisation.’

‘Of course,’ said Ndule. ‘I offer contrition. Our communications operative is the youngest of us, barely of la rank. I will take upon the role myself.’

‘Blessings of the T’au’va upon your vessel. You have three microdecs, no more.’

‘So polite, these ones,’ said Diamendros quietly, checking over his dual bolters. Like the ceramite of his power armour, they were polished to a high sheen. ‘We will show them a more straightforward path.’

‘It’s all a façade,’ said Caegros. ‘Their rhetoric is devised to lure gullible fools into compliance.’

‘Saves ammunition,’ shrugged Va’kaan. ‘It has a certain logic to it.’

More seconds slid past. The tension grew thick. Getting the Aleph Non – the sheep’s clothing to our Blackstar’s wolf – through the cordons was a matter of life or death.

Just a little closer, I thought. Ahead, on the Corvus’ densely packed control array, I could see the colossal magenta sphere of the gas giant Atazuga. Its orbit was dotted with smooth, aesthetically bland harvest ships, each siphoning valuable argon and other noble gases from the planet’s atmosphere. Atazuga’s harvest arrays were secondary to the planet’s main purpose, however; it was a staging post for the t’au navy, called the kor’vattra by the human gue’vesa we had turned back to the light of the Emperor.

Without Inquisitor Urbendralle’s informants, we would have been venturing straight into the teeth of an armada’s worth of firepower. But with the resident t’au fleet repelling a nearby Astra Militarum attack on a t’au diplomatic convoy, we had a chance – even if it meant braving the firepower of half a hundred orbital installations and the garrison of xenos pilots they had left behind.

Get in, kill the t’au monarch, and get out. Simple enough, in theory, but there were a thousand things that could go wrong. Orendu had likened it to getting into a hornet’s nest, right to the centre, and killing its queen whilst enduring the wrath of every xenos insect that could deliver a sting, but I knew different. The t’au’s fanatic devotion to their ruler made an insect worker’s dedication to its queen look like apathy.

Caegros wasn’t the only one with reason to hate the t’au. A few years back, I had the incredible fortune to return to my birth world in the line of duty. It made a kind of sense, given how big a presence Olovakia has on the Eastern Fringe. I was expecting to feel some human warmth, some simple comfort, in the familiar sights and smells I found there. Instead, I found a planet labouring under a curse. Olovakia’s rugged skyline was blighted by the pallid domes, shield generators and mushroom-like towers of a full-scale t’au infestation. I had been part of the purge that had allowed half the planet to evacuate in good order, and I felt good about that. But it had not been enough.

One of the first things you learn at the Eye of Damocles, our space-going watch station, is that once the xenoheresy has taken root in a civilisation, the only way forward is to burn it out. This I knew to be true. But I could not shake the memory of hearing my people scream for mercy in my own mother tongue, and I could not forgive the t’au for making it impossible for me to grant it. My own kin had insisted they had been content, more than they ever were under the ‘yoke of the Imperium’, as they put it.

I can smell their burning flesh now, if I dwell on it long enough.

Perhaps that is the real reason why the captain selected me for the mission. Not for my insight into the Codex Astartes as a Novamarine, but for the rage that simmered beneath it.

‘You have failed to comply in the time allotted,’ came the voice of our xenos interrogator. ‘Farewell.’

‘We’re under target lock!’ shouted Ndule. The Aleph Non suddenly veered, then veered again. If I hadn’t engaged the mag-locks of my boots I would have been toppled then and there. I caught sight of Braejac; the Space Wolf was grinning broadly in the gloom, the console’s lights glinting from the elongated canine teeth common to all his kind. He was testing the point of his spiralhorn-tusk power spear, as was his habit. That was another advantage of being a part of the Deathwatch. We were sanctioned to use whatever weaponry we considered most effective in the pursuance of our duties.

‘Cycling up battle systems,’ said Va’kaan. A sheaf of long servo-cables, sprouting from his pate like the dreadlocks of a Mortifactor aspirant, twitched and thrummed. ‘All at operative status.’

The Aleph Non jolted hard to the right. The screaming, whooping sound of depressurisation reached us from the cabin above.

‘Bad hit,’ growled Diamendros. ‘We should leave.’

‘Shipmaster Ndule,’ said Orendu. ‘Open the airlock. And may the Emperor guide your aim.’

A bleat of klaxons to mark depressurisation, and I saw a thin bar of light lance through the Corvus’ cockpit. It grew larger as the ship’s transport bay began to open. Around us, the transport ship shuddered as if in pain.

The Onyx Fist was out almost as soon as the aperture was wide enough to let it through, shooting out into the void as the freighter listed behind us. Ahead was the looming sphere of Atazuga. I spotted a flare-winged triangle of black against the magenta, grey and cerise banding of the gas giant: the Mako-class frigate Resplendent Dawn, our target, and the lair within which the xenos monarch made its nest.

‘Evade!’ shouted Orendu. A missile like a flattened, winged ingot shot over us as Va’kaan jinked the Blackstar to the right. The projectile curved back around as it recalibrated its targeting solution.

‘Kolos?’ said Va’kaan. I stepped up from the cramped passenger bay, took the co-pilot seat behind him and manned the Blackstar’s point defence guns. A swift interface with my power armour, and I sent a stream of solid shot ripping out to blast the deadly hunter-killer into a thousand pieces.

I have to say it felt good.

‘Three more incoming,’ said Va’kaan. ‘Think you can take them as easily?’

‘I won’t have to,’ I replied. ‘You will outfly them.’

‘There is truth to that statement.’ The Iron Hand pulled up hard, and the Onyx Fist’s boosters roared, sending it curving in a wide loop. The missiles followed suit, but a fraction too slowly. I shot one of them down, firing the assault cannons as we cut across its trajectory to send blossoming flowers of debris spinning into the void.

The other two missiles got past me.

I felt a moment of doubt, my throat constricting. Then Va’kaan triggered the Infernum halo-launchers. The Blackstar sent two wide sprays of countermeasures out like the spreading wings of an angel. A spectrum of chaff, sanctified flares and electromag pulses baffled the drone intelligences of the incoming projectiles. Both t’au missiles detonated prematurely. I felt a fierce, animal grin plaster itself across my face before I regained my composure.

Then a hypervelocity projectile shot past, silver and silent; were it not for my auto-senses latching on to it and relaying it at processable speed, I would have missed it completely. Bad aim, thank the primarch – t’au railgun fire could gut even the finest Imperial craft.

Behind us, the Aleph Non sent a plaintive alert signal that abruptly died out. I watched the ship come apart on the rear relay, its bridge and carrier hold alike shot through and shredded to almost nothing.

The shot had never been intended for us. At least Shipmaster Ndule went to his final rest with a measure of redemption.

‘Use that icon-marked cruiser for cover,’ said Orendu, pointing at a wallowing whale of a t’au ship. ‘Put it between us and the orbitals. Our countermeasures will not baffle railgun fire.’

‘It is done,’ said Va’kaan. The Fist slewed sidelong, and the nearest orbitals disappeared from view.

‘The Mako already has a bead,’ said Diamendros, tapping a finger of his outsized gauntlet on the glass read-outs. He was a terrible rear echelon driver; I think he fancied himself a better pilot than even Va’kaan.

‘In speed we will find our shield,’ muttered Braejac.

‘I concur,’ said Va’kaan.

The roar of engines at the rear of the craft intensified as the Blackstar shot forward. Ahead, a field of t’au missiles closed in upon us, flickering streams of light arcing amidst them to cut across a field of tiny white stars.

‘Brace,’ said Va’kaan.

We all tensed, mag-clamps active as the Fist spiralled around on its axis, wing over wing. I kept the assault cannons blazing, hoping to score a lucky hit or two on some incoming missiles. I could feel my stomach try to crawl up between my lungs, but rode out the sensation, clenching my muscle groups to maintain some kind of control. Some of my shots took out the incoming munitions, while others pattered harmlessly from the sleek frigates that were turning to bring their prow gun arrays to bear. Still more were wasted as they sailed off into the void, never to stop.

The vast Mako frigate was growing larger on the screen. Red designator runes leapt into life across its hull. Va’kaan glanced at me, and I took the hint, turning the Fist’s rocket launchers upon the Mako. Thin cylinders shot out from under the Blackstar’s wings, each a tank-killer in its own right, only to explode into concentric rings of light that left the ship itself unharmed.

‘Conversion field, or close analogue,’ said Va’kaan. ‘If we match its velocity, it will find it hard to repel us, but anything sent at speed will be neutralised. We will have to do this at close quarters.’

‘Works for me,’ said Braejac.

‘I imagine it does,’ said Diamendros. ‘Vindication for carrying that overlong spear all this way.’

‘This fine weapon has pierced the hide of bonewhales,’ said Braejac, snorting into his jaw-strap moustache. ‘It’ll push through a xenos battlesuit like an awl through sealflesh.’

‘Krakendoom’s lot,’ I said, before I could stop myself. ‘All boasts, no proof.’

‘Enough,’ said Orendu. ‘We near the strike point.’

The Blackstar jolted right, taking a hit from one of the many streams of energy weapon fire panning across the void towards us. I cast a glance across the runic display, but there was nothing glowing red.

Another hit. This time, one of the wing runes winked an angry crimson. Va’kaan dispatched his servo-skull into the crawl space behind us. The ugly, cable-spined thing drifted back, its tiny oxy-torch fizzing blue at the tip of one of its talons.

The Mako’s ochre hull grew massive on the display, suddenly close. It tried to pull away, but Va’kaan matched its velocity with ease. There was a blaze of energy as we pushed through the ship’s power field. Va’kaan’s theory was sound. By matching its velocity and heading, we could slip inside its aegis without destruction.

‘Step into debarkation runnels,’ said Orendu. ‘It’s time.’

Crouching down to allow the void screens to close overhead, I took my place behind Braejac. He ignored me, busy working a handful of stinking animal-fat unguent into the spiralling tusk of his spear. I pushed my helmet into place to hide my expression of distaste, feeling it cinch in at my neck as the clamps and sealants engaged. Such atavistic non-Codex rituals had no place in the wider Adeptus Astartes. But perhaps, in the Deathwatch, they were allowed for a reason.

It was something that Diamendros and I had discussed on more than one occasion. For every clash of cultures, a bond was made in the fires of war, often made all the more unbreakable because of those settled differences. When the brothers of the Deathwatch returned to their Chapters, they had a new respect for their comrades from different worlds; should there ever be friction between one Chapter and the next, it was usually those who had once served in the Deathwatch that made the peace.

One by one, the rest of the team followed suit, checking all was in order for the battle to come. In the middle distance, the energy runoff of Atazuga’s mining operation sent cables of lightning crackling out. We would be out in the void amongst them in a matter of moments. Though power armour was proof against the heat-sucking hunger of the void, even a Space Marine could not endure it forever. And should one of us be unlucky enough to attract one of those cables of lightning…

There was a sharp bang as the Corvus slammed its belly into the dorsal plate of the Mako xenoship, and then two more as the frontal exit points on either side of the Corvus’ nose section retracted open. Braejac pushed out onto the xenoship’s hull, boots clamping on to its metallic hide, with Orendu following suit on the other side of the Fist’s nose cone. We dispersed in good order. Point defence guns pivoted towards us from dome-like bulges on the Mako’s forequarters, but Va’kaan had chosen the landing point with care. The t’au could not draw a bead.

Then my helm blipped an alert rune, and something punched into me so hard I flew from the hull to spiral out into space.

It had been my worst fear, when I had been a mortal. I had revisited it many times since – the concept of spinning out of control, disoriented and terrified, breath coming fast and hot. The horror, rising, as my eyes flicked to the dwindling air supply. The panic attack, heaving breaths, gulping down the air and hastening my own death. Nothing to grab on to, nothing to arrest my progress. Only the end-over-end tumble, never slowing, until I died a slow and agonising death of asphyxiation, dehydration or hypothermia.

The impotency of it, that was the thing. Lost in the yawning void, you are but a speck, and your life and death is utterly irrelevant.

I felt a measure of that awful perspective as I spiralled head over feet into the nothingness. As I forced the rising panic down, I concluded that I had been hit by an energy weapon, one that had glitched my electromag circuits and compromised the armour’s finer augur protocols into the bargain. I was far from blind, but my certainty was fading fast.

Yet a warrior of the Adeptus Astartes is never really powerless.

I unclipped my bolt pistol, ran a mental calculation and took my shot. The discharge sent me veering off to one side. Not good enough. I paused, forced myself to find a measure of calm, and took another. Better, but still not right. I could see, as I spiralled backwards, I would miss my mark. Each time I missed, the task grew harder to achieve, and I had a limited amount of ammunition.

I took a deep breath, calmed myself. Then the solution came to me.

‘Brother Va’kaan,’ I said. ‘Please triangulate my trajectory against that of the Mako, and establish a ballistic solution that will propel me back to our intended ingress point.’

‘Stop firing for a moment,’ came the reply, ‘you are doing more harm than good. Right. Patching across, tight beam.’

Thank the Throne, the data came in quickly. I mapped it to my auto-senses, saying a silent prayer to the armour’s machine-spirit as the countdown inside my helmet scurried towards zero.

The bolt pistol made no noise, the lack of target robbing its rage, but when my helm data indicated that I was spinning towards the Mako, I felt an explosion of sensation nonetheless. Relief, pure and wonderful.

A few seconds later I saw Braejac’s longspear thrust past me, its spiral tip mere feet away. I grabbed at it on reflex, and he hauled me in towards him. Pivoting as I came, I was able to set my feet back on the t’au Mako’s hull. The sensation of my mag-boots sticking hard to the spaceship’s solid bulk was more welcome than I could ever put into words.

‘Secondary point defence hit you,’ said Diamendros, gesturing with his special-issue bolt carbine towards a twisted stump of metal that trailed smoke out into the void. ‘Kraken bolts duly applied.’

‘My thanks, brothers,’ I replied. ‘Let us complete our task.’

Va’kaan had already taken his place at the Mako’s disc-shaped airlock. The access code we had from Inquisitor Urbendralle would get us half of the way, and a brute-force attack the rest. That was the theory, at least. T’au technology was a twisted mockery of the tried-and-tested Imperial version, and one mistake would likely either seal us inside an airlock, soon to be dispatched, or force us to literally carve our way inside.

Va’kaan’s head-cabling linked him to the locking mechanism; by his silence, he had clearly made some progress. As Diamendros and I stamped our way over to him, the circular airlock door irised halfway open, juddering as if in pain. Va’kaan’s servo-arm took hold of one of the panels and wrenched it the rest of the way, the door’s interior mechanism meaning the others soon followed suit.

In less than a minute we had all hauled our way inside. After the disorientating spin into the void a few minutes before, I was profoundly glad to be within a structure, even a xenos one. Va’kaan was already wrenching the airlock closed, his servo-skull unclamping from his power pack to weld its thick panels into a void-tight state. The biomechanical attendant blipped a crimson light, indicating the seal was not sound.

Va’kaan took a soldercaulk phial from his belt, pressing its activation rune before extruding its contents over the compromised section of the join. For all that Braejac liked to mock him for carrying an armourium’s worth of kit into battle, the Iron Hand’s ingenuity never failed to impress me.

‘That will hold for a single pressurisation,’ said Va’kaan over the vox.

‘Trigger the interior door,’ said Orendu.

The Techmarine punched a finger into the metal of the vestibule wall, levered a panel from the smooth contour of the airlock’s interior, and sent his prehensile dataspike thudding home. A thin stream of smoke emerged from the panel. The airlock was ruined, but it was already repressurising to match the rest of the vessel’s interior.

I took a glance through the lozenge-shaped window that led into the depths of the craft. There were xenos figures there, alerted by some interior alarm and hustling down the corridor towards us. By the way they moved, they were well trained, a fire team with oblong-barrelled energy weapons trained on the airlock door.

Breachers, these ones were called. Close-quarters gunmen, and with pulse weapons advanced enough to punch through even power armour.

The airlock chimed, the inner door opened, and carnage broke loose.

Braejac was the first out, as usual. He had his circular storm shield high to cover his head, his longspear raised as he ran pell-mell for the end of the corridor. Pulse shots burned into his legs, but he barely missed a stride. Caegros kept a low profile behind, his axe held in a throttler’s grip as he closed in with deadly intent.

Diamendros raised his bolt carbines and fired them both over one of Braejac’s shoulders. I fired my Godwyn-pattern bolter over the other. The detonations that followed soon after were intended as suppression fire more than kill-shots, but they would buy the Space Wolf and the Scar Lord a chance.

More incoming fire. This time Braejac staggered backwards. Orendu sent a frag grenade spinning fast along the corridor between Braejac’s legs. One of the t’au shot it before it got to them. The detonation knocked Braejac to the side, sending him careening off the corridor wall. Caegros, suddenly revealed, hurled his combat knife end over end – it hit the nearest t’au square in the head, splitting his skull even as he raised his pulse carbine for a killing shot.

Diamendros and I took the opening. I thumbed my shot selector to Kraken penetrator rounds and blasted two of the t’au at the back of the corridor to so much organic wreckage, spattering crimson across the rest of their team. Diamendros took down two of his own, and Orendu another, his plasma-cored vengeance round burning the creature from the inside out. Then Caegros was amongst the rest of them, his axe hacking hands from limbs, limbs from torsos, heads from necks.

I will not deny it; I felt more alive right then than I had in months.

The t’au survivors at the far end made a smooth retreat around the corridor corner, leaning back out to take shots where they could. I felt a pulse round smack into my hip, knocking me backwards into the airlock in a wave of sudden agony. Alert runes flickered across my visor as my power armour rerouted its systems to compensate. I could feel bones grinding as I moved back into position. I would be limping for the rest of the engagement, perhaps for the rest of my life. Yet still I counted myself lucky. Had I been any closer, the shot would likely have torn my leg from its socket.

Braejac had recovered his charge, thank the Emperor. He crouched as he ran, lobbing a grenade of his own at the back wall – krak, of course, for the Space Wolf only ever shot to kill. It detonated with a sharp bang, a sudden percussive shot of energy that ripped one of the cowering t’au apart from shoulder to groin. Then he thrust out his spiral-tusked spear as he ran in close. One of the t’au on the other side of the corridor turned his shoulder to put his sinistral shield in Braejac’s path.

Not enough. The power spear punched right through in a crackle of disruptive energies. Spitted, the t’au was wrenched into the path of his comrade by a sudden twist of Braejac’s arm. Both were bowled over. Braejac yanked the spear free and lanced his next victim through the neck. The t’au fired as he died, the Space Wolf taking the pulse blast on his shield before leaping forward to knee another xenos hard in the torso. I heard the crack of bone, even at the far end of the corridor. The last t’au levelled his pulse carbine at the side of Braejac’s head, but Va’kaan took the xenos’ head from his neck with a sniper-cold shot.

What right did such weaklings have to contest the Emperor’s holy realm? No right at all. They would be put down, as the lion puts down the jackal.

Orendu led the second wave’s advance, with Diamendros, Va’kaan and me close behind. Braejac made sure of his kills as Caegros flicked gore from his axe.

‘Wait,’ came a voice from around the corner, deep and sonorous. ‘It doesn’t have to be like this.’ It was Low Gothic, heavily accented, but with a sense of gravitas that gave me pause.

I saw Orendu shake his head, motioning us forward. ‘Heed nothing.’

‘Wait, I say,’ came the voice. ‘Parley. We have common interest.’

‘I think not,’ said Orendu, stepping over the t’au corpses as he primed a krak grenade.

‘What if I told you a single command from me would spare millions of Olovakian lives?’

Olovakia. My throat felt tight, my soul suddenly caught between the claws of a dilemma.

‘Captain Orendu,’ I said. ‘That has the ring of truth.’

‘The y’he are encroaching,’ continued the voice, ‘the curse-race you call “tyranids”.’

‘What of them?’ said Diamendros. He had fought the tyranids before, and it had scarred him inside as well as out.

‘We represent civilised races, even with our differences. Should we not conserve our resources in the face of an elemental threat?’

‘Captain,’ I said over the vox. ‘Perhaps we can capture this one, hold him to ransom against what is left of Olovakia. They value their leaders most highly.’

Orendu turned to me, the red lenses of his helmet boring into mine.

‘The mission,’ he said. ‘We are Deathwatch.’

‘We will kill this one soon enough,’ I said over the vox-link. ‘But if there is any other way… I cannot have the deaths of so many of my people on my conscience.’

‘Then you are weak,’ said Orendu. ‘Then you have failed.’

‘My demise will almost certainly ensure your deaths,’ said the disembodied t’au voice. ‘But I know enough of the gue’ron’sha to know that will not stay your blades. I respect that. But know this. My death is symbolic. It will not discourage, but instead galvanise. It will divert our returning armada not back here, to Atazuga, but straight for the gue’vesa planet you hold so dear.’

This time, I could almost feel Orendu’s certainty ebb away. Such a backlash was all too possible.

The t’au speaker drifted around the corner of the corridor, tall and slender and borne aloft by some manner of drone-disc. An ethereal. In its alien foulness it was an offence upon the eye, but it had some manner of grace, that was undeniable. Its feet did not touch the device that bore it; instead it drifted a foot above the disc, arms held out to show it was unarmed.

I felt my face twist in distaste. Its hideous visage was a mockery of calm benediction. In my mind’s eye, I saw its flesh burning. But I also smelled the incineration of my own people, the death of the last survivors completing the job that I and my comrades had started.

Could I damn them all, in the next few seconds? Had I sunk that far?

‘I offer you this,’ said the t’au leader. ‘We will disappear from this sector entirely, and retreat to Sept space. All assets in this system will withdraw, as will those on Olovakia. We will cease this mining operation, and instead turn our full focus on the y’he threat. In all honesty, I believe this may be the only appropriate response to a threat of this scale.’

‘Not enough,’ growled Caegros. ‘You must die, for Vior’los if nothing else.’

‘And so I will,’ said the xenos, nodding slowly. ‘We t’au live for but forty, maybe fifty of your Imperial cycles, and I already have seen forty-eight. Think on this. With this truce, billions of lives will be saved. The people of Olovakia will continue to thrive under our protection. Together, we can save the entire sector from disaster. Our fleets, combined, have a fighting chance of holding back the y’he. The ever-devouring ones can be denied, not through rage, but through discipline, order and logic. These are tenets your warrior caste holds dear, are they not?’

‘I spit on your lies,’ said Orendu. He raised his bolter, and fired at the creature’s head.

His bolt detonated halfway to its target. The alien’s features twisted into a sneer. Then Braejac’s spear thrust forward, corposant crackling on its point. It burst into flame. The Space Wolf pushed it hard anyway, compromising the field’s integrity. He leant into it as hard as he could, raw Fenrisian strength matched against t’au ingenuity.

Caegros’ axe came in at head height, striking the straining force field in a blur of conflicting energies that overloaded it completely. The t’au ethereal raised a spindly arm, but the Scar Lord’s weapon cut right through it. The beak of the axe thunked into the xenos creature’s chest. It wheezed blood, crumpled in on itself as it toppled out of its anti-grav field to the floor below, and died in a spreading pool of gore.

Orendu strode forward, shoving past Caegros. This time he literally spat on the xenos warlord. The acidic fluid sizzled as it burned through the creature’s neck. He pushed his knife into its eye socket for good measure, then wiped it clean on the xenos’ robes.

‘Move out,’ said the captain, motioning back to the airlock. ‘We have cut off the head of this xenos force.’

And in doing so, I thought, we have damned millions of Olovakians to death by fire. They would die fighting, I felt sure of it, as soon as their t’au patrons’ guns were turned upon them and the vile truth about the xenos was revealed. The t’au would suffer hard in that purge.

And then, when the dust settled, the tyranid hive fleets would move in to devour whatever was left.

‘Watch-captain?’ I said as Orendu laid the melta charges that would see us step out onto the hull of the ship once more. ‘Was there any truth to its words?’

‘It matters not, Kolos. All those who live must die. It is the decisions we make in the meantime that live on.’

I nodded in agreement, but the words of the t’au ethereal had seared themselves into my mind. For my surety, it was already too late.

ENTOMBED

Andy Clark

Enemies came at Lothar Redfang from every side. Seven Deathwatch battle-brothers were arrayed about him in the green-lit gloom, aiming and firing with murderous efficiency, employing the columns and strange machines that crowded the chamber to provide cover against their foes’ strange weapons.

Emerald beams of energy whipped around him. One blast lashed a jutting column mere feet to his left, flaying its dark surface and causing the jade glyphs that inlaid it to spark and wink out. Clouds of ash-like detritus spewed away from the deep wound amidst crackling arcs of energy. Another blast caught Brother Alliarmus even as he stepped up on Redfang’s right. It bit deep into the Space Marine’s black Deathwatch chestplate, just below the vivid shoulder guard that proclaimed his origins amidst the Lamenters Chapter. Armour, then flesh puffed away layer by layer, and Alliarmus fell back with a cry, his rich Space Marine blood misting the air.

‘Secure this chamber!’ roared Redfang, his helm-vox amplifying the command so that it boomed through the high-ceilinged space. Targeting data flurried across his auto-senses like blizzard snow, wireframe images overlaying the strange abutments of xenos architecture and machinery to show where android soldiery were closing in from ahead. Their forms were skeletal and lurching. Their eyes pierced the gloom, acid-green lanterns that swayed closer with every step.

Necrons.

Deathwatch battle-brothers laid down covering fire around him. An icy downdraught from some hidden shaft high above plucked at the feral talismans Redfang wore and made them rattle against his armour. More gauss blasts ripped through the air, whipping around the Deathwatch as they returned fire.

Redfang brought up his combi-melta, Grafnir, and thumbed its shot selector. The weapon’s machine-spirit gave a low binharic growl through his auto-senses and a rune lit up in his peripheral vision – vengeance bolts chambered.

The Space Wolf squeezed his trigger and a vengeance round leapt away from Grafnir’s muzzle on a trail of burning propellant. The micro-missile struck a necron warrior square in the chest. Detecting impact, the bolt-round’s cogitator vented its internal plasma reservoir in a brilliant blast. The xenos android was blown apart as though a miniature star had been born within its torso.

Redfang snapped his aim to the right, sidestepping quickly as another necron opened fire upon him. Emerald energy flickered past close enough to strip a puff of paintwork from the watch-captain’s armour. In return, the necron’s armoured head snapped back as Lothar put a round into it, then exploded with a brilliant flash that left nothing of the android above its midriff.

His brothers’ fire increased the tally, bolt shells and energy blasts smashing metallic warriors from their feet. Some rose again, leprous green light shimmering around them as their broken bodies reformed. Only a few managed the unnatural feat, however; Lothar had ensured his brothers would be firing high-impact, high-damage ordnance only. In his experience, if you caused sufficiently catastrophic damage to the necrons, there just wasn’t enough left of them to stand back up and try to kill you.

Rounding a column with his force axe held high, Librarian Zachari unleashed his powers in a raging tempest of bright white lightning that extended before him, driving its leaping forks into one necron after another. Androids staggered and jerked, cerulean flames erupting from their eye sockets before they collapsed, sparking, to the ground.

‘Impressive, brother,’ voxed Redfang as the Librarian’s assault ended and Zachari ducked back to gather his might. Lothar received a single vox pip in response.

Typical damned Dark Angel, he thought. Tight-lipped, with all the warmth of a calving berg. Still, he didn’t have to like the Librarian to recognise the value of his abilities, especially in such a dire situation as this.

‘That’s the last of them,’ said Apothecary Sor’khal over the squad vox. He remained helmed despite his usual preferences in battle. They all did, even Lothar. He didn’t trust the air inside this cursed xenos tomb, especially after what they had endured on their way through the crags to reach this enormous structure. Its mere presence seemed to sap their will, affecting Zachari worst of all; if the site hadn’t been in what Lothar took to be a state of semi-dormancy, he wasn’t sure they could have made it inside at all.

Even so, they hadn’t managed it without cost.

Redfang glanced back to see that Sor’khal had dropped to one knee and was helping Brother Alliarmus with his wound. The White Scar had been Lothar’s battle-brother for long decades now. The watch-captain trusted Sor’khal at least as well as he trusted his own Fenrisian-born instincts.

You need brethren like him upon the long vigil, thought Lothar as his hands automatically moved through the rituals of reloading Grafnir. Without them you would lose yourself to all this.

‘Brothers, guard your thoughts from ill-wyrd,’ he warned his kill-team. ‘There is fell sorcery upon the wind. Do not let it numb your souls.’

‘It’s better since we passed the threshold and brought fire to their halls,’ said Sor’khal over a private channel as he finished his ministrations and helped Alliarmus to his feet. The Lamenter’s wound looked ugly, but Sor’khal’s attentions had at least sealed it and rendered Alliarmus able to fight.

Redfang grunted in agreement. So drained and beaten-down had the warriors of the kill-team been by close proximity to the vast pylon-like xenos structure, their attempts to slip past its deathless sentries had devolved into the costly running skirmish that they had only now finally concluded. Yet the moment he had stepped across the threshold of the arched entrance into the structure proper, Lothar had felt a weight lift from him, and his old warrior spirit had surged back. Librarian Zachari might have been right to assert that attempting to infiltrate the xenos mega-structure was foolish, even suicidal. However, Lothar derived a certain satisfaction from the revelation that inside the damned thing appeared to be the best place to shelter from its effects.

‘Seems that way,’ he replied as his surviving battle-brothers gathered themselves, checked over ammunition supplies and kept a weather eye upon the dark archways that gave onto this chamber. ‘Doesn’t matter either way. You know we can’t just run for home with our tails between our legs. We need to find out what this structure is, what it’s doing and why in the name of Fenris’ frosts the necrons have raised the damned thing here.’

‘Then we can run for home with our tails between our legs,’ said Sor’khal, his tone dry. ‘Wherever home might be at this point.’

Sor’khal’s words unsettled Lothar, for they echoed his own concerns. Astropathy had cut out on the same day that the immense superstructure appeared inexplicably amongst Forsica’s polar mountains. The small Deathwatch keep that Lothar had been inspecting found itself cut off, unsure of the nature of this threat or whether they alone were victims of the sudden smothering veil it projected. Lothar had decreed that they had to find out as much about this threat as they could before withdrawing to rendezvous with friendly Imperial forces off-world; despite the protestations of Librarian Zachari, the keep’s nominal commander, the raid had gone ahead.

‘And now here we are,’ Lothar growled to himself.

He snarled, angry at himself, angrier at the pernicious leechcraft of the foe. He had not long fought with any of these warriors save Sor’khal, for they represented the garrison of Forsica’s remote watch keep. Yet they were all brothers of the Deathwatch, the truest fraternity that Lothar had known since departing the ranks of the Space Wolves; Brothers Justirian, Kasmus and Phane would be remembered, their gene-seed borne back in honour.

He took a breath, then addressed his warriors.

‘Brothers, we have our mission. I’ll be a trollson if we’re about to let these tottering excuses for xenos servitors lay us low. Brother Rafenio, have we advanced deeply enough into the structure?’

The kill-team included a Techmarine originally of the Blood Angels. His armour was festooned with an array of strange devices, the workings of which Redfang could only guess at. It had been Rafenio who had originally suggested that he might be able to take auspicatory readings and perform energistic augury if they infiltrated the mega-structure.

Now Lothar watched Rafenio inspect the read-out on his vambrace auspicator. Zachari observed darkly from the shadows.

‘Not yet, watch-captain,’ said Rafenio. ‘The spirits of my instruments struggle to penetrate the interference generated by these heretical xenos engines. Perhaps by pushing a little further inwards we may–’

‘By the count of my helm-chron, we are almost a quarter-mile beyond the bounds of this structure,’ interrupted Zachari, his words steady and cold. ‘You suggested the same solution several chambers before this one, Brother Rafenio. Do you truly believe another hundred yards or so will make the difference, or are you loath to admit that my counsel was correct from the start and that this endeavour was a needless, ultimately unproductive risk?’

‘Brother-Librarian, several chambers before this one we remained under sustained xenos assault,’ Rafenio replied, his tone stiff but respectful. ‘Further, I do not seek to counsel you in matters empyric. I would ask that as I extend my trust to you when dealing with manifestations of the warp, so you in turn trust my knowledge in the matter of the sacred machine.’

‘We will get you into position, brother, and cover you while you commune with the data-spirits,’ said Lothar. Rafenio bowed his helmed head in thanks, the blood-drop adornments at his temples glinting darkly in the half-light. Lothar felt Zachari’s stare boring into him from the side, but did not deign to return it.

Why is it always bloody Librarians? he thought to himself. Eventually Lothar had forged strong bonds of brotherhood with the last Space Marine psyker alongside whom he had fought, on the world of Gyre. Zachari’s cold demeanour suggested to Lothar that the Dark Angel was less than delighted to cede control to a Space Wolf, and somewhat less likely to offer a hand of friendship any time soon.

‘Always making friends, wherever you go,’ Sor’khal muttered over their private channel.

‘What do you want of me, brother? He’s a Dark Angel,’ Lothar retorted.

‘He’s a powerful asset to us on this questionable endeavour of yours, Fenris, and he’s your second-in-command here.’

Lothar heaved a sigh, knowing the old White Scar was right. As usual.

‘In the Allfather’s name, we move,’ ordered Lothar, blink-clicking runes in his peripheral vision to order his kill-team into formation. ‘Let us try the archway dead ahead, see if we can’t find another, deeper chamber with a little less xeno-tech crammed into it.’

He set off at a steady lope along the broad passageway, passing narrow apertures and side-entrances graven into a substance that might have been stone or metal. Emerald glyphs flickered to the left and right, more pulsing away from each footstep Lothar planted.

Little hope of remaining undetected here, I’d guess, he thought. Speed must be our ally instead. His warriors followed him; Sor’khal and Rafenio kept pace with one another near the formation’s heart. Andrus, the Flesh Tearer, and Skrael of the Mortifactors pushed up at the fore, clearly eager to fell more xenos. Miguardus, the Crimson Fist, took rearguard, tracking his massive frag cannon back and forth as he advanced. Lothar led the pack, but was aware of Zachari like a watchful shadow near his shoulder.

‘Respectfully, watch-captain, I repeat my assessment of this mission,’ voxed the Librarian across a private channel.

‘I heard you the first time, Dark Angel,’ said Lothar, half of his attention on the flickering read-outs of his auto-senses and the gloom-shrouded corridor before him.

‘Heard, but did not listen,’ Zachari answered. ‘I do not seek to subvert the chain of command, watch-captain. I am not some enemy to be resisted. I offer you honest counsel as one battle-brother to another, and the longer you ignore it, the greater peril you place us all in.’

‘You remember why we are here, yes?’ asked Lothar as he led the way down a shallow ramp between huge, pulsing crystals.

‘To gather intelligence on the nature and purpose of this structure, to understand better the threat it represents,’ Zachari replied.

‘Then perhaps you should spend more time using your powers to hunt out those answers than questioning me,’ said Lothar. Having his helm on was making him feel stifled and irritable, unable to stretch out with his full Fenrisian senses. It did not incline him to pay heed to the Dark Angel’s malcontent. Certainly there was truth to what Zachari said, the risk of losing the entire kill-team increased with every minute they spent here.

And what then? No warning would get out at all. Is this your pride talking again, Redfang?

He didn’t think so. Every watch-captain knew the tale of Kill-Team Cassius and their mission into the foetid depths of the mine-pits of Ghosar Quintus. Without the courageous risks taken by that band of heroes, the Imperium still might not comprehend the true threat posed by the genestealer cults. Standard procedure when faced with a new and inexplicable xenos threat was to garner all useful intelligence possible before considering any withdrawal. Such was the fine line on which the Deathwatch balanced, for their warriors were assets too valuable for the Imperium to lose, yet without the risks they undertook every day to turn over the heaviest boulders and see what horrors lurked underneath, the Imperium might be caught unawares by xenos perils it could not counter.

Nobody needs another Hive Fleet Behemoth, he thought. But nobody asked you to equal the deeds of Chaplain Cassius either, whispered another part of his mind.

‘We are the finest arrows in the Emperor’s quiver,’ said Zachari, his tone still neutral despite Lothar’s brusque manner. ‘To shoot us blindly into darkness is to waste us. I will not let that happen while I still draw breath.’

‘Are you challenging my lead here, Dark Angel?’ growled Lothar.

‘No, watch-captain,’ replied Zachari. ‘Merely stating that if we must pursue this inadvisable course, then I shall consider it my responsibility to keep my battle-brothers alive despite your questionable command decisions.’

Zachari cut the vox-link. The Lothar of even a few years ago might have risen to the Dark Angel’s bait, turned upon him and sought to settle the matter in the Fenrisian way.

Older, wiser and twice as ugly now though, he thought, smirking without humour behind the faceplate of his helm.

‘Large chamber ahead, and the energy gheists are less enraged here,’ came Rafenio’s voice over the vox. ‘Watch captain, I can perform the rituals of augury here given time.’

‘We get in, we establish a cordon, Brother Rafenio performs his rituals, and then we exfiltrate at speed,’ Lothar ordered.

‘What, no attempt to go charging on into the darkness and blow this thing up from the inside?’ asked Sor’khal over their private channel, his tone wry. ‘In all the long years we have fought together, Fenris, I’ve never known you to pass up a chance to creatively interpret mission parameters if it meant greater glory.’

‘For all we know, the air itself is stealing the souls from our bodies,’ replied Redfang, spying the brighter glow of Rafenio’s desired open space ahead. ‘We’re cut off from any hope of reinforcement, and whatever we learn here may decide the fate of worlds.’

‘Sounds to me like precisely the sort of odds to tempt Lothar Redfang into something spectacularly stupid,’ snorted Sor’khal.

‘Not this place, brother,’ he replied. ‘Not this time.’

They emerged into a huge space, the largest Lothar had seen within the mega-structure. Its floor was broken by domed cairns of that dark rock-metal substance, each a good forty feet across and shimmering with acid-green glyphs depicting three equidistant circles shot through with a glowing line. In the distance he saw more archways studding the walls. High above, in the chamber’s chimney-like upper reaches, caged emerald lightning leapt and crackled.

Rafenio hastened into the shadow of one of the cairns, then knelt. He began unpacking and setting up strange sub-assemblies of technology, muttering sacred words to their machine-spirits as he worked. Lothar and his warriors fell into a watchful cordon around the Blood Angel, weapons ready.

‘Brothers, we hold this position and provide Rafenio with cover until he completes his task,’ voxed Lothar. ‘If–’

‘Target, fifty feet dead ahead,’ voxed Brother Miguardus, firing his frag cannon at the same moment. The weapon’s heavy shell detonated against the side of a cairn, spraying shrapnel in all directions.

‘Enemy approaching, thirty feet right,’ called Brother Alliarmus, his voice tight with the pain of his wounds, his bolter booming as he let fly. Lothar spun quickly, scanning for targets. His helm’s auto-senses flickered uncertainly, catching half-returns and barely glimpsed images, there and gone in moments.

Skrael convulsed suddenly as metal talons erupted through his black breastplate. The Space Marine rasped his agony through the vox, trying to turn and fight back against his killer, writhing like a bug impaled on a pin. The thing had materialised behind him now, a coiling mass of jagged machinery that floated on a trailing spine-tail of metallic discs. Its blunt head twitched Lothar’s way. Its eye-lenses gleamed, dispassionate, insectile.

Wraiths, thought Lothar with disgust. Unnatural, haunted things that he had fought only once before. He had not savoured the experience.

More battles raged to right and left, battle-brothers striving to spot and slay the necron constructs before they could bring their vicious blade limbs to bear. Lothar bared his long fangs behind his helm’s faceplate, then gave vent to a vox-amplified howl. Two of the ghostly constructs whirled towards him. They moved with shocking speed, vanishing from both Lothar’s sight and his auto-senses’ comprehension before reappearing almost on top of him.

Blade limbs swung, becoming insubstantial as they sought to bypass the reality of his armour before re-solidifying within his flesh. In one smooth motion Lothar dropped and rolled beneath the attack, ripped his chainsword from its sheath and thumbed its activation rune. Stormtooth howled into life an instant before it made contact with the body of the wraith. Only its talons had phased out of synch with reality, and, caught by surprise, the xeno-construct was not quick enough to do the same with its body. In a spray of sparks, Stormtooth carved through the mass of armoured cabling that harnessed one of the wraith’s body-segments to the next.

The effect was instantaneous – the lower half of the construct dropped, jackknifing and lashing wildly like a wounded insect. Its upper body went into spasm, blade limbs stabbing viciously outwards as its ocular lens flared. It attempted to phase out, but was too damaged and unable to properly maintain whatever anti-gravity field held it aloft. The construct’s torso fell, hitting the ground in a flailing mass of metal.

Snarling, Lothar kicked the still-squirming tail section away before levelling Grafnir and putting two bolt-rounds through what passed for the wraith’s head. The detonations deformed the metal mass from within, and amidst flurries of bright white sparks, it finally lay still.

Instinct brought Lothar around, raising Stormtooth in time to parry the downswing of the other wraith’s metallic talons.

‘Morkai’s teeth,’ cursed Lothar as his attacker, denied its easy kill, instead phased two limbs out of reality so that they passed straight through his guard. A split second before the talons could connect, a frag shell slammed into the wraith from the side and the explosion hurled it away, blowing Lothar off his feet into the bargain. His auto-senses furred with static before flicking back into focus. The watch-captain found himself lying sprawled near to Rafenio and hauled himself back to his feet. His ears were still ringing from the close-range blast and his armour smoked.

‘A little close, Brother Miguardus?’ he voxed. The Crimson Fist, standing guard over the Blood Angel alongside Librarian Zachari, shot Lothar a quick salute even as he reloaded his cannon.

‘You are welcome, watch-captain,’ he replied before firing another shell into the circling wraiths, blasting two into spinning metal fragments.

Lothar shook his head and took a moment to update himself on the situation. Runic designators showed him where fresh enemy forces were now entering the chamber from two sides.

‘More of their damned warriors,’ voxed Sor’khal as green energy blasts whipped around them. Zachari brandished his axe and a shimmering shield of force rose into being, deflecting the enemy fire. Yet more foes spilled into the chamber from another entrance, a band of Immortals leading more of their less-advanced warrior kin.

‘How long will this take, Rafenio?’ asked Lothar.

‘I have barely begun the observances, watch-captain,’ replied Rafenio with focused calm. ‘A long while yet, I am afraid.’

Lothar thought quickly. The first wave of attackers was beaten, the last of the wraiths now sparking and smoking. Only one battle-brother had been wounded in the fray; Sor’khal was even now crouched by Skrael, seeing to the warrior’s bloodied chest.

Yet it won’t be long before the Dark Angel is proved right, he thought. Not if we remain exposed like this. Not if the enemy’s numbers increase.

They needed to split the foe, either bottling them up beyond the entrances to this chamber or else giving them two separate Deathwatch positions to assail, catching them in the crossfire between.

‘I’m going to cut my way to a vantage point,’ he voxed to Sor’khal and Zachari. ‘Hold them off and be ready to reposition.’

Lothar made straight for the flank of the nearest cairn. From there he would have a commanding view of the chamber.

We might even be able to take to the higher ground up here if it’s stable, he thought, picturing the punishment that Miguardus’ frag cannon could rain down on the foe from such a vantage point. He wouldn’t let his battle-brothers be overrun, but he also would not abandon the chance to learn all they could about the mega-structure.

Lothar scrambled his way up the cairn, necron glyphs pulsing before his eyes. Dark shapes moved above as a fresh pack of wraiths materialised before surging down towards him.

‘Fenris, you said you wouldn’t do anything stupid,’ voxed Sor’khal, shells from his bolt pistol whipping past Lothar to detonate one of the xenos machines.

‘And you believed me?’ Lothar replied, Grafnir thumping in his fist and blowing another wraith apart. The third was coming at him so swiftly that he would never have the chance to raise Stormtooth in time. Lothar gritted his fangs and prepared for the pain of his enemy’s talons.

The side of the cairn opened beneath Lothar so suddenly that he didn’t even have time to cry out. Surprised into silence, he plunged into the dark shaft that yawned wide and swallowed him down. Above and behind him, the thunder of gunfire receded at speed. Helpless, he continued to slide down the steep angle of black stone, polished sheer as steel.

‘Sor’khal!’ he gasped into the vox. ‘Sor’khal, are you there?’

A green glow welled beneath Lothar even as his vox gave back nothing but dead silence. He did not even hear static.

Then he shot out of the bottom of the chute into open space and was falling free though a dark void, shimmering green light rushing up to meet him. Lothar felt a violent surge of disorientation, an awful tugging wrench, then he struck something hard enough to knock the sense from his skull.

Consciousness returned, though Lothar didn’t know how much later. Considerable pain came with it, flowing in from all over his body. His eyes flicked instinctively to the read-outs in his auto-senses, but to his consternation Lothar saw the runes were stuttering and confused, suggesting his helm had sustained damage. Defying his own orders, Lothar wrenched the useless thing from his head and mag-locked it to his belt, then pushed himself to his feet and dropped into a fighting crouch. Only then did he allow himself to focus on his surroundings.

They were surreal.

Lothar crouched on a floor formed from interlocking panels of black stone and something that resembled a cross between plasteel and precious stone. The panels, each several dozen feet across, gave off a faint luminescence that allowed the watch-captain to see.

This place is huge, Lothar thought. The diffuse glow faded away into the shadows, but before it failed it revealed a cavernous space dotted with stalagmite-like protrusions of necron technology. Somewhere high above, Lothar could see a separate green glow, shining down like an emerald star.

‘Fell from all the way up there?’ he muttered to himself. ‘Allfather, no wonder I hurt.’

He cast about himself and spotted Stormtooth and Grafnir both lying not too far from where he had landed. Fenrisian senses alive to every scent and sound, Lothar crept carefully over to each weapon in turn and gathered them up. Both had taken damage from his fall, he saw, but as he made his obeisance to their machine-spirits he was relieved to find that neither had been banished.

‘Looks as though you’re the only packmates I’ve got in this place now,’ he told the weapons. ‘My thanks for not abandoning me.’

That thought brought back the sight of his brothers drawn into a contracting ring about Rafenio, beset upon all sides. Lothar had to fight down the surge of frustration that rose within him. He activated the vox-mic built into his armour’s gorget but, though it hissed quietly, he could not persuade it to locate a single Imperial channel.

Broken? he wondered. Jammed somehow?

Another possibility tried to surface in Lothar’s mind. He had fallen through a shimmering green glow, and he was familiar enough with battling the necrons to know their predilection for teleportation technologies. What if he was nowhere near his brothers any more?

What if he wasn’t even on Forsica?

My brothers, I have abandoned you in peril, he thought. They had Sor’khal to lead them, but still, they had needed every able-bodied battle-brother to hold back the foe. Besides, what if his comrades had not spotted the strategic need to split the team? What if they were even now being overwhelmed, dragged down one by one?

I won’t believe that, he told himself fiercely. Not until I see them dead with my own damned eyes. They’re Deathwatch. They’re the equals of any gheist-wrought machine.

Still, the sense of powerlessness was dreadful. He could do nothing to aid his brothers while he was trapped here. Wherever here was.

‘Get my bearings,’ he told himself. ‘Find a way out. Find my pack and get back into the fight.’

It sounded simple enough when spoken aloud. Lothar was long enough in the fang to know that matters might not be so simple.

‘Nothing is going to happen while I stay here brooding, is it?’ he told himself. He might not have his auto-senses but, like most sons of Fenris, Lothar had always preferred his natural abilities to those imparted by his wargear anyway.

He concentrated on getting a sense of where he was, straining his keen ears and flaring his nostrils for anything that might aid him. There was a throbbing sound, as of power thrumming low and deep through arcane machines. He heard the tick and whine of mechanical systems, and occasionally, on the very cusp of his senses, he thought he detected some scuff or scratch that suggested movement.

He could smell very little – a tang of ozone on the air, the dry scent of electrical heat, but not much else. The necron tomb complex was scentless, though Lothar supposed that if no organic presence was allowed to intrude upon these sepulchral halls then that could account for it. But there was something else: a sort of smoky, chemical scent that Lothar instinctively felt was bad. It smelled acrid and in some way unreal.

Smells a little like burning plastek, he thought, frowning. Lothar isolated the scent, focused his prodigious Fenrisian sensorium upon it and looked slowly upwards. He felt a trickle of hope flow back into his twin hearts.

‘That’s what you smell like, isn’t it, you gheistling hel-door,’ he said, peering up at the distant gateway through which he had passed. There was no way that Lothar could see of returning through it, nothing to climb or ride up into the vaulted heights of the chamber. Even if he could have reached it, Lothar didn’t think he could scale the sheer chute he had plunged down. It had been too wide for any hope of bracing against its sides, and he had a feeling that attempting to mag-lock his boots to its surface wouldn’t work so well either. One of those grapnel guns the Reivers employed might have done the trick, but as Lothar didn’t have such a thing and couldn’t get anywhere near the portal to employ it, he figured he might as well wish for Logan Grimnar to soar down into the tomb aboard Stormrider and spirit him back to the battlefield.

‘But if I know what you stink like, you unnatural bastard, then maybe I can sniff out another one like you,’ he said.

And that would take you where, exactly? Some even-worse xenos nether-hel? The thought ambushed Lothar, sounding almost like Sor’khal’s wry, gravelly voice. Still, he had to concede it had a point. Randomly leaping through portals in the hopes of getting back to the Mesmoch Pylon didn’t seem like his cleverest scheme.

‘Better than anything else I’ve got though, isn’t it?’ he told himself. It was some hope at least, and that was far better than none. For the moment, Lothar decided, he would pick a direction and move in it, and he’d keep his senses alive to the slightest hint of another portal.

Allfather, watch over them until I return, he thought, then set out across the cavernous chamber.

The warriors of Fenris were hunters all – apex predators in Space Marine form. Though the youngest of their number rushed loud and headstrong into every fight, the veterans could stalk prey with every bit as much stealth and subtlety as a Fenrisian wolf on the prowl. They could not, however, move absolutely silently. Lothar’s power pack rumbled, a low, persistent sound interspersed with the soft whine of his armour’s servos and the dull clang of his footfalls against the hard ground. He cursed the noise he made, for he could not shake off the feeling that he was not alone in this strange place, but there was nothing to be done for it. He simply moved as quietly as he could, pressing on with his weapons ready against the inevitable moment that something became wise to his intrusion.

It was several minutes before Lothar finally saw a chamber wall loom up out of the gloom ahead. It towered like a cliff, inset with thousands of the strange circle-and-line glyphs the necrons favoured. These looked to be inscribed into the wall in silver, but as Lothar got closer he realised they were constantly flowing – molten metal running through narrow but invisible channels to form endless, infinitely complex patterns.

Unnatural, he thought with disgust. Nothing in this damned place is natural. Give me caves, ice, forests. Allfather, I’d even take the damned broodwarrens of Ghyre over this dead place.

Another mission, another world, another time, said Sor’khal’s voice inside his head. This time it felt almost as though a foreign presence had spoken within his mind, and Lothar frowned deeply.

‘Who speaks?’ he asked out loud. ‘Sor’khal?’

He checked his vox again, but the Apothecary was not addressing him. No one was.

Just your own damned subconscious telling you what you already know, he thought to himself. Lothar couldn’t wish his way out of this situation, so he discarded his desires as worthless whimsy and pressed on.

Ahead, he saw that several exits pierced the wall. The two at ground level were shaped like high arched doorways wrought in polished black stone. Others dotted the wall further up, hexagonal openings fringed with glowing circuitry. Wisps of luminescent green vapour drifted from their depths. The holes made Lothar wary, reminding him of Fenrisian troll dens.

I’ll be keeping my eye on you, he thought, before slipping carefully up to the nearest of the arched doorways and crouching to one side of it. Carefully, Lothar craned out and peered through. He saw a gloomy corridor stretching away into shadow, its entire length arched and narrow like the doorway itself. Nothing much bigger than a Space Marine could have used it and even then, they would be forced to proceed single file, pacing in a line between the glowing green glyphs that pulsed along its walls and provided the only illumination.

Not a good place to get stuck, Fenris, said Sor’khal in Lothar’s mind. They could come at you, front and back. Where would you be then?

‘Got any better suggestions?’ Lothar muttered, then shook his head at himself.

Must have cracked my skull pretty good when I fell, he thought.

Quick and careful, Lothar moved from one doorway to the next but found nothing more promising or spacious, nor did he detect any hint of the portal-scent for which he hoped. In the end, his irritation and impatience growing, Lothar simply squared his shoulders, picked an archway at random and plunged onwards.

Not a good place for them to get stuck in with me, he thought defiantly as he advanced down the claustrophobic tunnel. He followed it as it drove arrow-straight through the dark heart of the tomb, proceeding for almost a mile by Lothar’s estimation before reaching a crossroads with another, equally linear channel. Green light flowed in waves along the passages, splitting and dividing at the junction then rolling onwards and away. Lothar made the only choice he could, and continued.

It had been exactly a mile by Lothar’s count when he came to another crossroads, eerily identical to the first. He couldn’t suppress the thought that he was trapped in some kind of repeating loop.

It’s not such a cracked notion, he thought. Heard more than one saga about the necrons and their fondness for trap-dimensions, spatial oubliettes, tesseract labyrinths…

Not helpful, Sor’khal’s voice remonstrated. Focus, Fenris.

Lothar decided to press straight on once again, but this time with a sneaking suspicion of what he would find. Sure enough, a mile further on he came to another identical crossroads. Space Marines couldn’t feel fear, but the potent mixture of frustration and disquiet bubbling up within the watch-captain’s breast was a fit substitute.

‘Do I keep going straight, and risk facing this same scene over and over? Do I turn off and hope to find something else?’

He could always double back, he knew. Part of him liked the idea – simply backtrack to the chamber and try another route. But that would mean wasting yet more time, not to mention admitting to himself how unsettled he was by his surroundings.

Besides, the doubting part of his brain whispered, what if you go back and all you find is more and more crossroads, and no chamber at all?

‘Allfather take this and cast it into the sea,’ Lothar muttered to himself. With a deft motion he ran Stormtooth’s deactivated blade-teeth across one corner of the crossroads, laboriously sawing a shallow notch into the black stone. Energy sparked briefly about the wound, and Lothar didn’t like the look of the pale green glyphs that radiated briefly outwards from it before fading again from sight. Still, he needed to know. Satisfied with the mark he had made, Lothar advanced once again.

Another mile passed beneath his boots before he came to yet another crossroads. To his relief, Lothar saw no sword mark carved into the left-hand archway. He breathed a little easier at the sight, until he recalled how the metal of necron armour plating could flow and heal, how the bodies of necron warriors reformed with time.

Another surge of disquiet.

Another brief internal argument, during which Lothar saw how swiftly being trapped in such an alien maze might erode the sanity of even a Space Marine.

Indecision gripped him, an unfamiliar and unpleasant feeling. It wasn’t that Lothar feared being trapped; rather, his frustration and concern for his brothers was only growing keener as time ticked by, and if he was headed in the wrong direction then the further he pressed on, the more time would be wasted retracing his steps. Yet what if turning aside only led him deeper into a maze? What if just one more tunnel, one more mile would lead him out into some new chamber, or even bring him the tantalising scent of a portal waiting to be used?

It was then that Lothar’s keen ears caught faint sounds from somewhere behind him. He spun, raising Grafnir as the tick and scrape of metal on stone carried to him on the still air. The glyphs pulsed steadily past, the light they brought running down the dark corridor towards him, passing him, rolling on and away into gloom. Another green pulse, then darkness. Another, then darkness.

Lothar growled low in the back of his throat. He’d definitely heard movement. He knew he had. In his mind’s eye, he saw again the ghostly green glyphs flaring around the notch he’d carved in the archway, and the unsettling dark openings high up in the chamber walls.

You let them know you’re here, Fenris, Sor’khal whispered in his mind.

‘Allfather, guide me from this accursed maze,’ muttered Lothar, though he wasn’t sure if he was more disturbed by the persistence of Sor’khal’s voice, or by his continued imprisonment. Turning, he continued along his route. Green light rolled up behind him, passed over him like some deep-sea leviathan, then flickered away ahead. He had gone only a quarter of a mile when Lothar heard the sound from behind him again.

Metal scraping and clicking against stone.

It was clearer now. Louder.

Nearer.

He spun and levelled Grafnir once more, but again nothing came but the steady, maddening pulses of green light and darkness.

If I actually meet anything willing to give me a stand-up fight in this place, I swear by the Allfather I’m going to rip its damned head off, Lothar thought angrily.

Still wary, he turned and kept moving, increasing his pace, no longer trying to move quietly. Behind him he heard more metallic scrapes and clicks. There was an eagerness to them now, a fervour that he didn’t like the sound of. And as the noises grew closer, Lothar realised they weren’t being made by something, but by lots of somethings. He heard a ticking, rustling multitude of noise that rushed along the tunnel at his back like the wind through Fenrisian brittlepines.

As the next green pulse rolled up the passageway, Lothar turned and looked back again. His flesh crawled at the sight that met his eyes; the walls and floor of the narrow tunnel seethed with movement. Hundreds of red eye-lenses glowed in the gloom, all fixed unerringly on him. Canoptek scarabs – beetle-like robot constructs each barely larger than his own handspan. Lothar had seen these vicious little machines before, seen them swarm over armoured warriors and even battle tanks, and strip them down to nothingness with the flickering energy that spilled from their mandibles.

Can’t fight that swarm, Fenris, said Sor’khal conversationally. They catch up to you, they’ll strip you to the bone in a minute flat. Better run, brother.

Lothar needed no further prompting. He turned and pelted up the passage. Behind him, he heard the buzz and chitter of the scarab swarm as they surged forward in pursuit. He pounded along, no longer concerned by questions of repeating passageways or which route was the right one. He just ran.

Picking the right path won’t matter if it kills me, he thought grimly as he dashed along the corridor, his footfalls ringing around him. Green light raced up behind, flashed brightly past him, sped on into the gloom.

It illuminated a blank wall less than a hundred yards dead ahead.

‘Morkai’s blood, now the damned layout changes?’ Lothar howled angrily, still running full pelt towards the glyph-lit wall that marked the corridor’s sudden dead end. He could turn and fight, but he knew he wouldn’t last long, not in such confines and against such numbers. Dying here wouldn’t do his brothers any good at all.

No, Lothar had one chance and he had to hope that it would work. Otherwise, he was going to die.

Without slowing, he raised Grafnir and selected melta fire.

‘Oh, machine-spirit, lend thy wrath to my cause, I beseech thee,’ he spat, then pulled the trigger. Concentrated microwave energy spewed in a tight beam from the weapon’s secondary muzzle and chewed into the metal of the wall ahead. A circular patch about the size of Lothar’s torso glowed red, then white. Molten metal dribbled from the wound, bubbling and hissing as his melta-beam bored into the tomb wall.

Deeper.

Deeper.

Lothar was almost out of tunnel and the rushing cacophony of the swarm was nearly upon him.

Good try, Fenris. Fight well ’til the end, brother, came Sor’khal’s consoling voice.

The wall gave. Molten metal shuddered then collapsed, spilling into open space beyond. Lothar’s hearts pounded and, with a mighty howl, he crossed his arms over his head and hurled himself into the gap he had blasted.

Agony clawed at him as white-hot metal splashed onto his scalp, scalded the skin from his forehead, bit hungrily into the flesh of his neck. In an instant, he was through and rolling to his feet, swiping madly at the burning metal and scraping it from his flesh before it could do any more harm. Turning, Lothar pointed Grafnir at the molten gap, selected hellfire bolts, and unloaded them into the hole.

The first scarabs met hurtling bolt shells loaded with potent xenophagic bio-acids. The rounds punched into the insectile robots and blew them apart, showering those same bio-acids across their fellows and the breach itself. Molten metal and sizzling acid met and reacted furiously, creating a seething ring of death into which the scarabs poured. Constructs thrashed and died, melting and fusing together. A few managed to spill through the gap but already the wound in the tomb wall was cooling, and as it did the living metal sought to heal itself. Scarabs chewed madly at the wall and at one another as they sought to break through and fall upon the intruder, but they only succeeded in clogging the breach with more robot corpses.

Won’t hold them for long, Lothar thought. He suspected that some xenos intelligence governed this place, something that would not allow his pursuers to mindlessly destroy one another. Yet the desperate ploy might hold them back long enough for him to escape.

Lothar looked about himself, hoping for some obvious exit.

He froze. His eyes widened.

The chamber he had entered was huge, perhaps as large as the one into which he had fallen before. It swam with white vapour and was cold enough that his breath misted before his face.

It was also filled from floor to ceiling with rank upon rank of metallic, cradle-like bays. Within each, arms folded across their chests, heads lowered as though in repose, were thousands of necron soldiers.

The lights in the chamber pulsed angrily.

The slumbering figures started to twitch and stir. Emerald eye-lenses flared in the gloom on every side.

‘Allfather’s arse,’ groaned Lothar before turning and running again.

Gases puffed out in cold geysers from vents and tubes. Electrical energies arced overhead. Lothar was reminded uncomfortably of a disrupted insect hive as the motions on all sides increased and the necrons began to animate. A cold metallic arm shot out, grasping fingers scraping across his pauldron. Another snatched at his head, tearing a handful of hair from his wounded scalp. More hands snatched and flailed at him, their owners grabbing mindlessly as he rushed past. Green eyes glowed on all sides. Figures heaved themselves into ominous motion.

One necron, a little faster than its fellows to rise from dormancy, lurched into his path. Without slowing, Lothar activated Stormtooth in a roar of whirling teeth and hacked the android down. He vaulted its toppling form, angry sparks leaping around him. Lothar hit the ground and kept running, narrowly evading the thing’s clutching hands as they closed on the empty air behind his heels.

Another metallic xenos fell from a higher row and slammed down in front of him. He leapt over it, firing downwards as its metal hands clawed at his power armour. It did not slow him, but Lothar could not keep evading the necrons forever. He dredged his subconscious for every scrap of training he had ever received amidst the Deathwatch that concerned the fighting of necrons: weaknesses, motivations, evasion and purgation patterns, anything. His mind offered up a wealth of knowledge and Lothar girded himself with all that he could, but against such numbers he doubted even the accumulated lore of the entire Deathwatch would have made the difference.

Better a Watch Company or two at my back. Barely halfway across this damned chamber and there must be thousands of gheists waking up, he thought, snarling as a metal hand grabbed his arm. Lothar hacked through his assailant’s wrist and kept running, shaking the still-gripping hand loose with a grimace of disgust.

You’re going to get overrun, Fenris, warned Sor’khal. You are in the belly of the beast.

Lothar knew it was true. Even he couldn’t fight an army.

Won’t stop me trying though, will it? he thought fiercely.

Then he caught it, the faintest scent of burning plastek from somewhere up ahead.

‘Yes,’ he breathed and redoubled his efforts.

Racks were on the move, ice-smooth hydraulics delivering them to ground level as they rotated vacated bays out of line. Necrons stepped from their frames all around him, eyes glowing, hands clawing. Several toppled across the pathway before Lothar and he leapt again, clearing the tangle only to be grabbed by both shoulders as another of the xenos appeared before him. Lothar didn’t think, he just drove his head forward in a thunderous headbutt that smashed one of the thing’s staring eyes and forced it to relinquish its grip. Lothar shot the necron point-blank and blew it from its feet, then, as he felt more hands grabbing at his power pack from behind, he ran on again. Blood spilled freely from a gash in his forehead, and he had to swipe at it to keep it out of his right eye.

Headbutted a lump of metal, said Sor’khal’s voice archly. Good work, Fenris.

‘You’re not even real,’ snarled Lothar as he ran, shoulder-barging another necron from his path, then fighting his way between two more before they could grip him and drag him down. The sense of motion all about him was nightmarish; at any moment Lothar expected to be seized and torn apart by the xenos masses. Yet somehow, he stayed ahead of them, like a frostfin riding a bore wave. Putting on a last surge, Lothar burst from between the rows of necron crypts and into an open space whose floor bore a titanic glyph.

This one, he recognised. The necrons called it the Ankh of the Triarch, and from what the Deathwatch had surmised, it was as much a symbol of necron authority as the Imperial aquila was a symbol of mankind’s. To one side of him, Lothar saw row upon row of head-high black pyramids. The surface of each bristled with jutting gun barrels, and he realised he was looking at a form of armoury comprising dozens of gun-racks.

Gun-racks for the android soldiers even now striding up behind him in a jostling mass, with their staring green eyes and their grasping hands.

Going to be a lot worse if they can shoot at you, said Sor’khal in his head. Lothar couldn’t help but agree. Fortunately, to his other side, Lothar saw the source of the portal-scent. A trio of arched gateways were set into the chamber’s far wall, each one looming twenty feet high and filled with leaping green energies.

They were also several hundred yards away at least.

Makes sense, reasoned a detached part of his mind. Stored in the chamber at my back, awakened and armed in the next one along, then straight through a portal to… where? His brothers? Some other world entirely?

‘Move,’ Lothar told himself and broke into a headlong sprint. Behind him the necrons were clustering around the weapons racks, eerily orderly and disciplined as they armed themselves. Lothar kept running, knowing that his enemies would be stepping away from those racks, raising their vicious gauss weaponry, taking aim…

He glanced back in time to see the first bolts of emerald energy flash towards him. Lothar threw himself flat so they passed overhead, then scrambled back to his feet and kept running. In that momentary glance he had seen something that made his situation even worse; spilling between the feet of the necrons in their hundreds came the tide of scarabs he had delayed.

You know those things can fly, yes? asked Sor’khal helpfully.

Lothar didn’t bother to answer the voice in his head as he heard the telltale thrum of wings behind him. Lots of them.

He grunted and staggered as a gauss beam carved a line of fire across his ribs.

Don’t fall, he thought, fighting to keep his balance, to keep moving. Fall and you’re dead.

Another blast hit Lothar in his armour’s power pack, staggering him again as the bulky slab of ceramite and machinery took the brunt of the shot. He didn’t need his helm-runes to tell him the damage was bad; he felt power leach away from his armour, felt its weight increase as its servos struggled to aid him.

Still he kept running, the portals growing closer with every step.

More shots whipped by, several stripping layers from his armour, one drawing a bloody furrow through his left thigh. The thrum and chitter of the scarabs grew deafening.

They’ll be on me any minute, and then it will all be over.

Somehow, Lothar stayed ahead, feeling exhilaration grip him and propel him forward as the portals drew nigh. He didn’t have time to make an informed choice regarding where the doorways might lead. Lothar simply aimed for the centremost of the three gateways and leapt. As he plunged into its shimmering light, he spun, aiming Grafnir by instinct and pulling the trigger. Bolts spat from the gun’s muzzle and struck a jutting spar of necron technology that rose beside the portal’s outer arch.

He had no right to hope that it would close the gate behind him, yet it did. Sometimes the Allfather watched over His champions.

Lothar felt a momentary surge of elation at his escape.

It guttered like a candle-flame in a blizzard as, a moment later, he was engulfed in absolute agony.

He couldn’t breathe. His skin was encased in needles of ice. His veins felt like rocks, his tendons straining to rip through his skin. His eyes were boiling in their sockets. His multi-lung engaged, and the surge of oxygen brought realisation.

Hard vacuum, thought Lothar. Then, helm.

Forcing one fumbling hand downwards, he snatched his helmet from his belt and thumped it into place. He had no air in his lungs with which to intone the right prayers, but the seals caught all the same and Lothar felt blessed relief as his armour pressurised against the void. The watch-captain took a shuddering breath and looked around.

Where in all the wide Imperium are we now? wondered Sor’khal’s voice in his mind. It seemed to have grown fainter somehow, as though addressing him from a great distance.

‘You’re back on Forsica,’ Lothar said, voice thick and grating. ‘As for me…’

He tried to ignore his helm’s faulty auto-senses as they flickered gibberish across his field of vision. Looking past them, Lothar forced himself to comprehend what he was seeing.

He knelt on a balcony wrought from pearlescent metal. Behind him was the dead mouth of the portal he had come through, while arched doorways led off to either side of it, back into some immense structure. Before him lay the cold, dark void of space. Nothing separated Lothar and that immeasurable expanse but a single slender metal railing. The void wheeled above him, spread endlessly away to left and right, stretched out ahead into star-scattered infinity.

The sea of stars… How can there be gravity? wondered the analytical part of his mind. Why don’t I simply drift away?

The greater part, however, tried to process the impossible structures that hung about him in the void. They were necron in construction; their weird geometries, their colossal, pyramidal shapes and the circle-and-line glyphs burning bright across their flanks told him that much. They were also, Lothar felt sure, the largest artificial constructions he had ever seen. Though he had no true basis for comparison or distance amidst the emptiness of space, somehow he knew these ships, or star forts, or whatever they were would have dwarfed even the Fang.

They certainly made miniscule the fighting craft that thrummed about them, and the smaller platforms and void-gates and energy-tethered orbital plates that hung between them in the darkness. Lothar saw shapes moving across these in immense numbers, humanoid figures marching and assembling and stepping through emerald portals in mute defiance of the inimical environment.

Thousands upon thousands of necrons, he thought. No, millions, must be…

Lothar knew that what he was witnessing mattered, that it was information, however bewildering and surreal, of potential enemy strengths and movements. Still, he could barely focus upon it. His gaze wavered, unwilling, appalled at the cyclopean impossibility of all that he witnessed. Vast, dark shapes moved through the outer dark beyond the structures, like deep-sea predators circling prey.

Tomb ships, he realised with a surge of horror. So damned many of them… It was an immense armada. It was a concentration of strength so fearsome that it could devastate a sector of Imperial space.

More than ever before, Lothar wished he knew where he was right now. How could such an accumulation of necron military might exist without the Imperium’s knowledge? Where was it gathering? Worse, what if this was but a part of it?

Sor’khal’s voice was trying to say something more to him but it was faint now, terribly faint, and Lothar’s overloaded consciousness could not make sense of the words. They faded like a voice lost amidst a Fenrisian blizzard.

The spell was broken as energy flashed just to his right and a fist-sized chunk of the railing blew apart in a silent puff of scorched matter.

Warning runes flickered haphazardly across Lothar’s vision.

Attack, he thought, dragging the thought from the blackened mass of his consciousness and examining it with bewilderment. I’m under attack…

Another flash, and this time Lothar cried out inside his helm as searing agony wracked him again. Lightning coiled about him, danced stabbing and hateful through his veins, leapt between his armour and the railing before him, then back again.

Instinct took over.

Lothar turned and rose, staggering, to face the necron Immortals trudging soundlessly towards him along the balcony. Three of them had emerged from the right-hand doorway and he, his wits lost to the impossible vista, had not seen them coming. Even now one of them was pouring soundless lightning into him from the bulky gun it held, while the other two, clutching hefty gauss weaponry, were lining up killing shots.

Lothar’s fury rose. The wolf within bared its fangs and snarled, and he snarled with it. No amount of time amongst the ranks of the Deathwatch would ever drive Fenris from his hearts. He was predator, not prey, and he would not die out here in the fathomless darkness, unknown and unremarked for his heroism.

Howling with agony, feeling his flesh and organs roasting within his sparking armour, Lothar Redfang raised Grafnir and shot his attacker in the face. The gun’s bolts flew strangely in this realm of half-gravity and soundless inertia, but the micro-cogitators within each projectile knew their duty and they performed it well. Mass-reactive rounds punched into the hulking Immortal and blew its skull and then its torso apart in spinning clouds of shrapnel.

With nothing to halt them, the shattered fragments of his enemy’s body and head spun apart like a star going supernova. They peppered Lothar and the other two necrons equally, whipping shards of semi-liquid metal puncturing armour plates. Energies flashed and the necron’s remnants were gone, leaving thin rents in Lothar’s armour that vented atmosphere in shrill puffs and let the inimical cold of space creep in.

Fenrisians don’t fear the cold, he thought, semi-coherent, and charged headlong into the remaining two Immortals. Stormtooth took the head from one and sent it spin-drifting high and away over the railing. The other fired point-blank but Lothar’s sudden assault had thrown its aim; gauss energies lashed out and stripped the Space Wolf heraldry from Lothar’s pauldron, but in return Lothar rammed Stormtooth deep into his enemy’s artificial innards. The sword’s churning teeth disembowelled the necron, spewing fistfuls of mangled metal into the void.

The Immortal lurched backwards, trying to tear itself from the blade and level its gun, but Lothar wrenched his weapon upwards until it tore through the thing’s torso and obliterated the ankh emblazoned upon its chest. The necron’s eye-lenses flashed and darkened, and he felt the malevolence go out of it as it slumped, then vanished in a flickering emerald haze.

Lothar didn’t pause to think. Space Marines could deal with a lot, far more than any mere human, but he sensed that to ask too much of his abused psyche in that moment would be to risk catatonia. His subliminal training inloads might even plunge him into a healing torpor against his will. Alone and with absolutely no hope of rescue, he could not risk that.

Instead, ignoring the spreading cold that told of flesh and muscle dying and turning hard around the rents in his armour, ignoring the sanity-blasting things he had seen and endured, ignoring the warning runes that flashed crimson in his auto-senses, Lothar concentrated on one thought.

I need to find another portal and I need to get out of here. I need to get back to my brothers.

And what a help you will be, in your condition, came Sor’khal’s voice again, but it was the ghost of a whisper quickly silenced. It was as though Lothar had travelled so far beyond all he knew that even the echoes of his companions had been left behind.

For a Space Marine, the notion of going on without his battle-brothers was a grim one. For a warrior both of Fenris and of the Deathwatch, it was doubly so.

Yet that was what Lothar did. Stepping over the blackened scorch marks left by his slain assailants he plunged through the doorway they had emerged from and into a maze of pearlescent corridors beyond. Lothar’s breathing was ragged in his ears. His steps were heavy and lurching, fighting the weight of his slowly seizing armour as the machine-spirits of his power pack expired one after another. Grafnir was all but spent, Lothar’s complement of bolt shells close to expended, and his body was battling hypothermia as the cold of the void seeped insidiously in by the minute. He knew that his body was dying around him, that he would be lucky not to lose limbs even should he somehow escape these deadly environs within the next few minutes.

Lucky would be making it out of here at all, he thought, but still he pressed on.

Lothar felt a strange lack of alarm as he noticed that something huge and dark hulked in his peripheral vision. He heard its hot breath slipping between its fanged jaws, though how that could be, he did not know. He felt its ice-blue gaze upon him as it prowled at the edge of sight, smelt the snow-wet pelt and the old blood upon its claws. He heard the hiss of fur against metal as its back brushed the corridor’s ceiling.

What are you? he thought as he permitted himself a sidelong glance at the huge beast. The obvious answer to a Fenrisian such as him was that this was Morkai, come to guide him to his final rest. If so, that was an honour indeed. Yet as the manifestation looked back at him and Lothar saw the intelligence glinting in its ice-blue eyes, he wondered.

No, not Morkai, for don’t they say that his eyes burn red like the fires of hel?

Another thought came to Lothar as he stumbled down the interminable corridors. It was impossible – he knew that even as it surfaced in his mind – yet some small part of him could not help entertaining the fancy.

What if it is Russ?

He discarded the notion at once, and with no little scorn at himself. Why would the primarch’s spirit choose to guide him, a virtual exile from his Fenrisian brothers now? Why should Lothar be so special? Even if what the skjalds told was true, and the primarch’s spirit did appear to his gene-sons in times of great need, why should that be the case in this alien place?

Yet as the hulking beast turned back to regard him again at the next junction, then prowled deliberately off down its left-hand fork, he couldn’t deny that he felt a sort of pull from the creature. There was something immensely powerful about it, something of the supernatural, which had triggered the thought in him to begin with.

If it’s even real,’ he thought, angry at his own faltering weakness. If it is not some phantom sent by the xenos to bewitch my senses and lead me at last into a trap from which I cannot escape.

Lothar followed the wolf all the same. In his condition, the enemy had little need to mislead him, he reasoned. And who was he to turn aside if by some miracle it was the primarch’s will or spirit that came to him now?

Lothar met more necrons and he slew them with bladestroke and bolt shell, one xenos abomination at a time. Sometimes he thought the great black wolf fought at his side, other times that it simply lurked and stared with its ice-blue eyes. His foes wounded him in turn, and Grafnir spent the last of its fury upon them. Dimly, Lothar was aware of the change in the lighting as he fought each desperate, silent duel.

Is that my dying eyes? he wondered. Do they see in crimson pulses as my hearts beat their last? But no, he realised, it was the corridors themselves that now shuddered between pearlescent haze and wrathful red glare.

An alarm? He glanced to his right, seeking the great wolf’s opinion, but the beast was gone. Lothar felt clarity return a little at its absence.

He realised that he was staring dully at a design, picked out in glowing green light above a high-topped arch. Three circles, equidistant, shot through with a line of emerald fire.

The cairns, he thought, drawing in ragged breaths and fighting the numbing cold. That sigil was on the cairns.

A film of energy leapt back and forth across the doorway itself, and it dawned on Lothar that if there had been any way for scent to carry in this place then he would have smelt burned plastek with a fierce intensity.

The black wolf had led him this far. Lothar would trust its guidance.

It is that or stay here and die, he thought. And I am not spent yet.

Lothar stepped forward, and all but fell through the necron portal.

Air entered his lungs and left them again, entered and left. Pain prickled through the numbed nerves around his damaged flesh. More pain, squirming through the meat of his brain and wriggling into the backs of his eyes.

It was the absence of cold. The absence of the void that had been gnawing at his body for so long. He was somewhere with atmosphere, and warmth, and air, and those simple facts sent a surge of exhilaration through him that was the equal of all his pain and horror.

Dulled by all he had endured, it took the watch-captain a moment to fully absorb his surroundings. Still necron, he saw with disappointment, but surely nowhere near where he had been before. The portal still rippled at his back, its unclean stink now filling his nostrils. The chamber was wide and low-ceilinged, fashioned from dressed blocks of a shiny black stone and echoing to the tramp of mechanical feet that rolled from somewhere nearby. Emerald witch lights leapt and arced about the ceiling. Glyphs shimmered and glowed along the walls.

From where Lothar stood in the shadow of some incomprehensible technological obelisk, one in particular caught his attention.

Three circles, shot through with a line, said Sor’khal’s voice, strong now again in his mind. The glyph pulsed in and out of sight above a green-lit opening in the wall a hundred yards to Lothar’s left.

That’s the symbol I saw on that damned pyramid before I fell, thought Lothar. Could it be the way back to Forsica? Am I already there?

Either way, he knew that the glyph might be his last hope. He didn’t need the stuttering ghosts of his helm’s runic display to tell him this dreadful adventure had taken its toll. Even Lothar’s transhuman physiology was at breaking point, entire regions of his body frostbitten, organs labouring to deal with the damage of a dozen wounds and more. His mind, too, was all but broken by the things he had seen. His armour’s spirit was nearly extinguished, the ceramite and adamantium dragging at his limbs as though it were he who now had to see it back to safety rather than the other way around. Lothar had lost Grafnir entirely, Allfather only knew where. The weapon’s loss shocked him now that he registered it, and he felt sorrow stir within his breast. He hoped the machine-spirit of his fallen packmate would forgive him for such a faithless act.

At least he still had Stormtooth, clutched tight in one fist.

And he was still Deathwatch, still Fenrisian born, still alive. He had seen things that the entire Imperium needed to be told of.

Right after all, Dark Angel, he thought with a flicker of his old bravado.

Only if you get back alive to tell someone, cautioned Sor’khal.

‘And my brothers are still out there,’ he growled low in his throat, though by now he wouldn’t allow himself to hope.

Instead, Lothar forced himself to start walking and then, when he found that he could, he accelerated into a limping jog. He could still hear the thunder of marching feet nearby, echoing from one tunnel or another, but he couldn’t be sure if it lay before him or behind, or was perhaps rolling over him from one of the side tunnels that led from the chamber.

‘Doesn’t matter, just keep going,’ Lothar told himself as he passed beneath the lintel marked with the circle-and-line glyph.

‘Just keep going,’ he repeated as he saw a green glow welling along the wide, low-ceilinged corridor, reflecting from its polished surfaces. He smelled burned plastek and felt a fresh surge of hope that made his abused hearts thump faster.

Move, Fenris, bloody move, urged Sor’khal’s voice in his head as Lothar stumbled then forced himself onwards. Another powercell died somewhere in his pack and now he was heaving his armour along as a dead weight, fighting its seized motive actuators and feeling his hearts fight to keep pumping with so much blood gone, so many vessels and veins frozen and dead.

Fenris, you will not give up now! shouted Sor’khal in his mind, and Lothar snarled in response, redoubling his efforts as the sound of marching feet became a rolling thunder at his back. He shot a glance over his shoulder and saw them coming, dozens of necrons, packed shoulder to shoulder and moving in lockstep with their guns clutched tight across their chests and their lantern-like eyes glowing. The light from above danced across their verdigrised bodies and threw his shadow long at their marching feet.

Lothar kept moving, kept limping, one more painful step then another, another, another until the swirling lights of the portal danced all about him and its unclean stink was all he could smell. Behind him, the crashing footfalls came down like an avalanche and with a howl of effort he took a last few steps towards the portal’s shimmering skin.

Come on, watch-captain, just a little further, come on–

‘Fenris! Storms of Chogoris, that’s Fenris’ designator! Lothar! Watch captain, is that you?’

It took Lothar several thudding heartbeats to understand that the voice he heard was not the Sor’khal in his mind, but the voice of his real, flesh-and-blood battle-brother. He blinked stupidly, trying to force his thoughts into focus. How could he hear Sor’khal when he was still in the same tunnel? Realisation hit him as he saw that yes, it looked the same, but now the portal’s wyrdlights danced at his back, and ahead, not a hundred yards away the tunnel opened out onto a wide-open space lit by the dance of crackling lightning.

‘Forsica,’ he croaked, then dropped to one knee.

‘Watch Captain Lothar, brother, is that you?’ Sor’khal’s voice crackled from his vox-bead. It was distorted by static, tinny and distant, but it was him.

Alive.

Still alive.

‘It’s me, brother,’ gasped Lothar, planting the tip of Stormtooth into the ground and driving himself back to his feet. ‘Where are you?’

‘Emperor, but it’s good to hear your voice, Fenris,’ said Sor’khal. ‘We’re dead ahead, right where you left us. Four brothers down but Rafenio has done his work! Rally to us, watch-captain, we need to get out of here now!’

‘Can’t… haven’t…’ Suddenly Lothar couldn’t force the words out or make sense of his thoughts. He was dying, he knew it, could feel the aching, pinching pain of his secondary heart finally giving up the fight.

‘Lothar?’ Sor’khal’s voice was concerned now, urgent. ‘Brother, what has happened?’

He wouldn’t let it end like this, not so close to victory. With a howl of effort, Lothar drove himself to his feet even as blasts of green energy whipped around him from behind. One struck him in the leg, flensing away armour, flesh and muscle, but it was just one more pain amongst the many and it did not topple him.

‘I… the tomb… ships…’ he rasped, but there was blood gurgling in his throat, turning his voice into a rough growl even he couldn’t understand. Frustration lent Lothar strength. He wouldn’t die with this knowledge trapped in his skull.

Lothar burst from the arched tunnel mouth and into the chamber of cairns. Ahead, he saw his battle-brothers, already moving to meet him with their guns up. Skrael and Miguardus were both sorely wounded, being supported by Rafenio and Sor’khal. Zachari was even now replacing his helm but as he raised it over his head, his eyes met Lothar’s.

Ice blue. His eyes were ice blue.

With me all the time, thought Lothar wonderingly. Not Sor’khal. Him.

Someone else had seen all that he had. Lothar might be dying, but whatever part of Zachari had accompanied him, had spoken to him in Sor’khal’s voice, must have borne witness to his deeds, learned the same dire facts he had.

And whatever they cannot learn from him, perhaps my auto-senses… my armour’s recordings…

He toppled forward and hit the ground. Overhead, blasts of emerald light and roaring bolt shells criss-crossed. A large form leant over him, grabbed him, started to drag.

‘Fenris, I swear to the Golden Throne, if you die on me…’

‘Said… I’d do… nothing… stupid…’ said Lothar, his voice hoarse, and Sor’khal barked a mirthless laugh.

‘We’re getting you out of here,’ said Sor’khal. ‘We’re all getting out of here, and off this world, right damned now.’

‘With me all the time,’ croaked Lothar.

‘What’s that?’ asked Sor’khal, ducking and then discharging several shots from his bolt pistol. Lothar cast about and caught sight of Librarian Zachari, standing tall, his powers lashing out as he drove back the foe.

‘With me… all… the…’

Lothar’s voice trailed off as darkness claimed him, but it didn’t matter.

He’d learned enough, and thanks to his brothers the warning would get out. He had done his duty. That was all that the Allfather ever asked.

About the Authors

Originally hailing from the rain-swept land of the Picts, Steve Parker currently resides in Tokyo, Japan, where he runs a specialist coaching business for men and writes genre fiction. His published works include the novels Rebel Winter, Gunheads, Rynn’s World, Deathwatch, Deathwatch: Shadowbreaker, the novella Survivor, and several short stories featuring the Deathwatch kill-team Talon Squad, the Crimson Fists and various Astra Militarum regiments.

Ben Counter has two Horus Heresy novels to his name – Galaxy in Flames and Battle for the Abyss. He is the author of the Soul Drinkers series and The Grey Knights Omnibus. For Space Marine Battles, he has written The World Engine and Malodrax, and has turned his attention to the Space Wolves with the novella Arjac Rockfist: Anvil of Fenris as well as a number of short stories. He is a fanatical painter of miniatures, a pursuit that has won him his most prized possession: a prestigious Golden Demon award. He lives in Portsmouth, England.

Marc Collins is a speculative fiction author living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. He is the writer of the Warhammer 40,000 short story ‘Ghosts of Iron’ and when not dreaming of the far future he works in Pathology with the NHS.

Justin D Hill is the author of the Necromunda novel Terminal Overkill, the Warhammer 40,000 novels Cadia Stands and Cadian Honour, the Space Marine Battles novel Storm of Damocles and the short stories ‘Last Step Backwards’, ‘Lost Hope’ and ‘The Battle of Tyrok Fields’, following the adventures of Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed. He has also written ‘Truth Is My Weapon’, and the Warhammer tales ‘Golgfag’s Revenge’ and ‘The Battle of Whitestone’. His novels have won a number of prizes, as well as being Washington Post and Sunday Times Books of the Year. He lives ten miles uphill from York, where he is indoctrinating his four children in the 40K lore.

Nicholas Wolf is an author, artist and occasional musician. He’s written science fiction for several publications, and his work includes the Warhammer 40,000 short stories ‘Reborn’ and ‘Negavolt’ for Black Library. He lives and works in Arizona, with his family.

Sarah Cawkwell is a freelance writer based in north-east England. Her work for Black Library includes the Silver Skulls novels The Gildar Rift and Portents, and the Architect of Fate novella, Accursed Eternity. For Warhammer, she is best known for her stories featuring the daemon princess of Khorne, Valkia the Bloody.

David Guymer’s work for Warhammer Age of Sigmar includes the novels Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods and The Court of the Blind King, the audio dramas The Beasts of Cartha, Fist of Mork, Fist of Gork, Great Red and Only the Faithful. He is also the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Slayer, Kinslayer and City of the Damned and the Gotrek audio dramas Realmslayer and Realmslayer: Blood of the Old World. For The Horus Heresy he has written the novella Dreadwing, and the Primarchs novels Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa and Lion El’Jonson: Lord of the First. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written The Eye of Medusa, The Voice of Mars and the two Beast Arises novels Echoes of the Long War and The Last Son of Dorn. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Awards for his novel Headtaker.

Phil Kelly is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novels Farsight: Crisis of Faith and Farsight: Empire of Lies, the Space Marine Conquests novel War of Secrets, the Space Marine Battles novel Blades of Damocles and the novellas Farsight and Blood Oath. For Warhammer he has written the titles Sigmar’s Blood and Dreadfleet. He has also written ‘The Woman in the Walls’ for the Warhammer Horror portmanteau The Wicked and the Damned, and a number of short stories. He works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham.

Andy Clark has written the Warhammer 40,000 novels Fist of the Imperium, Kingsblade, Knightsblade, Celestine: The Living Saint and Shroud of Night, as well as the novella Crusade and the short story ‘Whiteout’. He has also written the novels Gloomspite and Blacktalon: First Mark for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and the Warhammer Quest Silver Tower novella Labyrinth of the Lost. Andy works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham, UK.

An extract from Deathwatch: Shadowbreaker.

‘Wrong side of the line this time, Lyndon. She made a mistake. Dragged you into it. Don’t make it worse. We can help her, but only if you talk to me. The longer you wait, the greater the chance she dies out there.’

The speaker moved in closer. Lyndon could feel hot breath on his face, noted the sharp scent of recaff on it.

‘We already know about the shipments, the fringe-world smugglers, the charters into t’au space. I admire your loyalty, but think, man – no transmissions, no word of her for months. If she weren’t in trouble, why the silence? The ordo can’t just sit on this.’

The pitch-perfect tones of the confidant, all understanding and sympathy and reason. Every sound, every look, every gesture was calculated to convey that this was a fellow on your side, a man with your best interests at heart. All he wanted was a little information. Just a few words, so easy to speak, so unbearably painful to keep to oneself.

Bastogne, he called himself. Not his real name.

He was good, but Lyndon knew the dance. He’d been on the other side of it often enough. Didn’t make it easier. Too much was at stake. Her ladyship had asked for trust. She needed time. Lyndon expected to die here in order to buy her that. It was the best he could realistically hope for now.

Had the abduction team consisted only of this interrogator and his muscled goons, Lyndon’s confidence in his ability to stay silent would have been supreme. But there was a fly in the balm – a man-shaped fly sitting on a wooden stool in the far corner, robed and hooded, tattooed with the marks of both the ordo and the Adeptus Astra Telepathica.

An ordo psyker.

Sartutius, the others had called him. He sat in silence, pensive after his earlier failed attempt to pry information from Lyndon’s mind with his fell sorcery.

The pentagrammic wards tattooed on Lyndon’s flesh and laser-etched into his bones were holding off the psyker’s invasive mind-assaults, but for how long? Sartutius never seemed to blink those useless all-white eyes. He never looked away, no doubt intent on Lyndon’s aura, probing for gaps, eager to exploit any cracks that would let him inside.

Yes, Lyndon’s wards were strong, but given enough time and the right kinds of pressure, an ordo psyker almost always got the answers he or she was looking for.

A bead of sweat rolled down Lyndon’s neck. No respite from the heat in here.

The interior of the crude structure was baking hot. A single room, twelve metres by seven, the walls thick, the floor rockcrete. Solid. Probably soundproofed and scan-shielded, too. The interrogator and his team weren’t sloppy. They’d have prepped the place well.

Oil stains on the rockcrete floor, heavy-duty pulleys attached to the rafters – the place had likely been used for vehicle repair or storage in the past. Metal slats high in the walls were tilted inwards a few degrees. Through them, spears of hot midday sun sliced into the room, muted by the grime on the windows but still bright enough to leave trails when Lyndon closed his eyes.

The windows were high, the glass clouded and milky. No one would be seeing in.

‘Trying to help you here,’ Bastogne continued. ‘The ordo takes care of its own.’

Groxshit, thought Lyndon.

Everyone in the ordo knew the truth – the larger factions within warred constantly for power and control.

He pressed his lips together, felt pain where the lower lip had been split in the scuffle of his kidnap and re-split in the subsequent beatings.

He hurt all over. It got worse every time they dragged him up out of that hole and smacked him awake. And it wasn’t going to get better.

Dust motes danced a slow waltz in the air, moving gracefully on the interplay of warm microcurrents. Time seemed to pass at a crawl in here. Before the beginning of this morning’s round of questions, he had lain with hands and feet bound, a black sack tied over his head. They gave him food and water, just barely enough to keep him functional. Isolated and blindfolded, most hostages quickly lose track of time, Lyndon knew. It was a common technique, all part of breaking them down.

But mental time-keeping had been an early part of Lyndon’s basic training. By his count, they’d been holding him for three days and six hours. And that meant alarm bells were ringing loud and clear elsewhere.

There was a sudden hard yank on his outstretched left arm. A surge of fresh pain followed as rough rope bit into his wrist. The masked thug holding the left rope had adjusted his grip. Now the one on the right, just as powerfully built and identically masked, shifted his grip, and more of Lyndon’s nerves sang out. It was only these ropes and the graft-muscled brutes holding them that kept him upright. He no longer had the energy to do so himself. He suspected several bad fractures in his legs.

Simple-minded thugs. Brute force. No finesse. Had he not been bound and injured, he could have killed both in a matter of seconds.

But here he was, strung to pulleys in the ceiling, stripped to the waist, face bruised and swollen, cuts and contusions all over. He was limp, beaten as badly as he’d ever been.

Clever of them to use that paralytic when they did the snatch. It’s what he would have done.

They had placed a false tail on him at the port, just clumsy enough to be noticed, not clumsy enough to be a clear dupe. While Lyndon had been busy avoiding the more obvious tail, he hadn’t spotted the snatch team. He should have known they’d never trust his capture to just one man.

Sloppy. And now he was paying for it. But he wouldn’t let her ladyship suffer for his mistake.

There had been no time to bite down on the cyanide tooth. The paralytic they’d hit him with had been so fast-acting, so potent. Neurox necarthadrine or some new derivative. He was unconscious before his head hit the street. While he’d been out cold, they’d extracted the tooth. The fact that he was still breathing meant they’d also nullified the tiny cortex bomb in his skull.

No clean, quick death for field agent Urgoss Lyndon. Not while he knew what these men did not.

He felt Bastogne’s breath on his face again, this time close to his ear.

‘We’re trying to help her. I wish you could see that.’

The ordo seal was legitimate. Lyndon would have known a fake. Besides, Bastogne had Inquisition operative written all over him. Despite the heat, he wore a long black grox-leather coat and gloves. Somehow, though everyone else in the room was sweating rivers, he was as cool as ice.

‘You know,’ said Bastogne, stepping back but still facing his captive, ‘I admire your loyalty, your integrity. You’re good. Well trained. I respect that. We’re the same, you and I. Same sense of duty to the ordo, to our handlers. Had mine disappeared, you would be asking the questions right now instead of me, desperate to help an inquisitor who, in all probability, needs urgent aid. I wonder if you’d be quite as patient with me as I am being with you.’

Lyndon had nothing to say to that.

Bastogne turned away for a moment and sighed. He came back in close. Hovering there, he spoke softly in Lyndon’s ear.

‘I would help you, you know, if things were reversed. I’d know that it was the right thing to do. Damn it, man, think of the Imperium. We want the same thing. The enemy is out there, not in here. If you’re helping anyone with your damnable silence, it’s the stinking xenos.’

Lyndon almost managed a snort, but his mouth and nasal passages were bone dry. All that came out was a wheeze. He hung there, breathing hard through those dry, split lips, eyelids fluttering as he teetered on the edge of passing out again.

Bastogne shook his head and gave another sigh, heavier this time, then began slowly walking around Lyndon.

‘What am I to do, then? If you won’t talk to me, how can I help? Doesn’t it bother you? She may be dying out there. The t’au may be cutting into her flesh as we speak, eager to gain whatever she knows. Hear the death clock ticking. A retrieval team sent now, today, might be the only chance she has.’

Lyndon let the words roll off him. His ladyship had been clear:

Nothing and no one must interfere with my plans. You will give your life if you have to, but reveal not a word. I tell you now, the stakes have never been so high.

There was a sudden rush of movement from behind him. Pain exploded in his kidneys. Bastogne had struck him a savage body blow.

Agony became all of his reality. The breath burst from his lungs. He sagged almost to his knees, but the twin thugs yanked him up again, sending more fire through his singing nerves.

Throne and saints, thought Lyndon. Let it end. Let me keep my silence and just die.

Bastogne snarled and spun away in disgust, the tails of his long black coat flaring, his veneer of kindly patience abandoned at last. Behind him, Lyndon coughed wetly.

‘Damn your ancestors,’ Bastogne spat over his shoulder. ‘If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’m going to start enjoying myself. You don’t want that.’

To the others, he barked, ‘Keep him upright.’

The heavies pulled in the slack again. Lyndon was raised almost onto his toes. He hissed in agony.

Bastogne walked over to a plasteel table set flush against the west wall and opened a black case. Looking down at the contents with some distaste, he spoke quietly, as if murmuring to himself.

The tiny I-shaped pin on his collar picked up his words.

‘My lord, I think I’ve taken this as far as I can go with conventional methods. This is ordo conditioning at the highest level. He can’t be broken without extreme measures.’

Another voice – calm and level, but grainy from so much distance – responded via the micro-vox-bead in Bastogne’s left ear.

‘It was to be expected. Time to move this forward. I want Sartutius to try again. After that, use one of the worms, but not before.’

Bastogne frowned. There in the case, in a transparent cylinder of toughened permaglass, several slick purple forms writhed and slithered against each other.

He looked over at the cowled figure in the corner, seated on his wooden stool, hands clasped, exuding the fell atmosphere which clung to all so-called gifted. The psyker’s tall wooden staff rested against the wall beside him.

‘You’re up again, witchblood.’

There was a frustrated mutter from the cowled man, but he took his staff in hand and raised his frail form gently from the stool. With his other hand, he drew back his hood to reveal a face deathly pale and deeply lined. Networks of pale blue veins laced his papery skin, flowing everywhere. The veins were joined by wires that trailed back to a psychic amplifier bolted to the base of his neck. In the centre of his forehead was the stark red tattoo of the schola that had trained him in the marshalling of his foul power, the same schola that had subsequently sanctioned him for ordo use.

As he brushed past Bastogne, the psyker paused briefly. ‘This is pointless, agent. I have told you already. He is too well protected. If it were tattoos alone, we could flay him. But to break the wards on his spine, on his skull… He would die before I could–’

‘Do as his lordship commands,’ snapped Bastogne. His dislike for the psyker was never far from the surface. ‘And do it fast. Or what good are you?’ He gestured down at the worms in the tube. ‘If you can’t, we go to the last resort. The chrono is ticking. We’ll need to move soon.’

Sartutius scowled, but he crossed to stand directly in front of Lyndon and raised his right hand. Spreading his fingers, he pressed the tips to several points on the prisoner’s head. He began to chant, his voice a low, monotonous drone.

Lyndon tried to pull his head away, but he was too weak. The psyker’s fingers held him.

The sunlight in the room seemed to flicker and dim.

A sudden chill pricked the skin of those present.

The walls seemed to withdraw a little as unnatural power tainted the air.

Bastogne watched, back to the wall, as far from Sartutius as space allowed. The masked heavies turned their eyes away. They hated being near the sanctioned psyker, especially while he exercised his unholy gift.

Beads of sweat began to form on Sartutius’ pale, bald head. Bastogne saw the trembling begin, saw the muscles of the psyker’s jaw clench as he exerted more and more ethereal force. Something foul began to prickle the skin of everyone in the room. Sartutius’ body became tense, trembling with effort. Bastogne thought the man’s sparrow-frail ribs might crack any second and his chest collapse. Blood began to seep from the psyker’s nose and the corners of his eyes.

The chanting rose in tone and volume.

Then it stopped.

With a sharp cry, Sartutius reeled backwards, almost tripping on his robe. He stumbled, righted himself with his staff and staggered breathlessly back to his stool. He was breathing hard, soaked to the skin. With his long cotton sleeves, he dabbed at the blood trails on his face and neck. When his breath had returned, he hissed at Bastogne, ‘Damn your eyes, man. I told you there was nothing more I could do. The wards hold!’

Bastogne growled back, ‘If his lordship says you try, you bloody well try.’

But Sartutius had tried, and it was clear that Epsilon’s bone-engraver had done all too good a job on her agent.

There was only one option left.

Bastogne reached in and lifted the cylinder from the case. Somewhat gingerly, he pressed the release on the hinged titanium cap. With his other hand, he took a pair of slim metal tongs, dipped the ends into the top of the cylinder and withdrew one of the squirming creatures.

The worm’s puckered facial orifice immediately rolled back, revealing a cluster of red cilia that began questing in the air, seeking living flesh. At the base of those cilia, Bastogne saw glimpses of the small black bone-cutting beak.

By all the saints, how he hated these things!

He closed the cap and placed the cylinder with its remaining worms back in the case. With the tongs held well away from his body, he crossed back to the centre of the room and the wretched man suspended there.

He stopped a metre in front of Lyndon and raised the worm slowly towards his face. Sensing the proximity of a living host, the worm’s cilia began moving frantically, greedily. The creature writhed, struggling to break free from the grip of the plasteel that held it.

‘You know what this is,’ said Bastogne, voice low, resigned. It was not a question.

The regret was genuine. Truth be told, he didn’t want to do this. Lyndon was forcing him, and for what? The ordo always got what it wanted in the end.

The prisoner raised bloodshot eyes under a bruised and swollen brow and saw the squirming organism just inches in front of him.

He twisted away in panic, feebly yanking on his restraints. The two men holding the ropes tensed, fixing him in place, the muscles of their forearms hardening like lengths of plasteel cable.

Lyndon knew this creature. Seven years ago, he’d had to use one, and for seven years, he’d tried and failed to forget that day.

‘Don’t,’ he breathed. ‘Epsilon still serves the ordo. I serve the ordo. I cannot tell you what you want to know… But have faith. Please. Just… don’t do this.’

The look of reluctance on Bastogne’s face as he brought the creature closer to Lyndon’s nose was no act. ‘I have orders, agent. The ordo needs to know why she went dark. I need her location. Give me reason not to use this before it’s too late.’

How Lyndon wished he could talk. His mind was already busy making the sentences he could speak to avoid this worst of fates. The worm meant more than death – it meant an agonising descent into madness, the dissolution of his mind. Once it was inside him, it could not be stopped. And still, no matter how much he yearned to escape that fate, he would not – could not – betray her ladyship’s trust. Epsilon’s discovery was of greater importance than the life of any man. The chance that Al Rashaq was no mere legend, that it could conceivably be found and exploited… It was worth many more lives than his.

It could change everything.

So Lyndon held his tongue and steeled himself for the mind-destroying agony that was about to become his entire existence.

Click here to buy Deathwatch: Shadowbreaker.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Pedro Núñez.

Deathwatch: The Long Vigil © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. Deathwatch: The Long Vigil, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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