Watchers in Death

by David Annandale

  He reached the flames of the burning ork, and he could move faster. He slipped under the arms of the dead ork. He looked up into the leering face of the remaining giant.

  A straight shot. Up through the jaw guard of its helm and into its eyes.

  He brought up his bolter.

  Too slow. Too slow.

  The ork’s power claw closed around Mandek’s head.

  Zerberyn fired.

  The claw snapped shut.

  The ork’s face disappeared. Its skull disintegrated. The hail of shells knocked the remains back in its helm with explosive force. This greenskin did not remain standing after it was dead. It fell backward. The closed power claw dropped away from Mandek’s headless corpse.

  The giants were dead. The number of the other orks was dwindling.

  Then Kalkator’s voice was on the vox, that double voice of ancient warrior and of something else even older, that voice of an enemy, yet that voice strangely welcome. ‘We have taken the bridge, Zerberyn,’ he said. ‘What is your status?’

  ‘The starboard guns are silenced, or soon will be,’ Zerberyn said. He took up his position at the head of the formation once more. The Fists Exemplar moved forward, grinding the orks into the deck. ‘The ammunition flow is disrupted. We will be moving to the port side now.’

  ‘We will join you there. The ship will soon be ours.’

  ‘Good.’ Zerberyn blinked the channel closed.

  He looked forward to his left and to his right as he advanced, shoulder to shoulder with his brothers through the smouldering wreckage of the gallery. They were leaving brothers behind. At the rear of the formation, Apothecary Reoch would be retrieving the progenoid glands of the fallen, preserving their genetic legacy and the continuity of the Fists Exemplar. The brothers had not fallen into oblivion, and they had not fallen in vain. Their deaths gave him sorrow. He found acceptance in the thought of their gift to the future.

  It was Mandek’s death that bothered him. Zerberyn had been unable to save him. There was nothing more he could have done. He knew this to be true.

  And yet…

  I did everything possible. No one could have saved him.

  He repeated these truths to himself as if they were weak, and must be reinforced or else they would fracture and turn into lies. He repeated them in the hope they would bury his awareness of the other thing he was feeling.

  Relief.

  Mandek’s oblique accusations were silenced now. So were the questions he had asked.

  And the astropathic message to Thane would not be sent.

  He could not be saved, Zerberyn thought. Snarling, he blasted a charging ork’s torso to shreds.

  He could not be saved.

  He could not be saved.

  Every step of the march through the gallery, Zerberyn repeated the words. They began as a refrain. Gradually, they became something more. Something very like a prayer.

  He could not be saved.

  He could not be saved.

  There could be no salvation.

  Six

  Terra – the Imperial Palace

  On Daylight Wall, Koorland watched and listened to the night. He had hoped to return to find the silence banished. Instead it was waiting for him, between the sounds of celebration, coiling around the lights in the dark.

  This is the victory I have brought you, Koorland thought. Perhaps the citizens of Terra did not feel the silence. Or perhaps they were trying to banish it. Koorland could make no such pretence.

  The silence of the dead regarded him from the depths of the night.

  There were fires burning out there, but they were the bonfires of celebration and thanksgiving. The flames of destruction caused by the moonfall had been extinguished. Most of them. Towards the equator, one of the firestorms still burned. And the devastation would take centuries to repair.

  In orbit above Terra, there was more damage. The void war had ended with the destruction of the moon. Many Imperial Navy vessels had been destroyed. Others barely limped back to port. At least the ork interceptors had been obliterated by the shockwave of the moon’s explosion.

  Earlier in the day, in the Great Chamber, Koorland had listened to Tobris Ekharth read the tally of victory. Hundreds of millions dead. Entire regions of the Imperial Palace had vanished. Some of the craters were ten kilometres wide. So much dust had been thrown into an atmosphere already dark with pollutants, day had been banished for years to come. Terra cycled through the heavy gloom of evening to the most profound night. Ash fell across the globe, white and grey and black, an accumulation of dry, gritty snow.

  When Ekharth had finished, Koorland looked at Kubik. ‘Why did this happen?’

  ‘The analysis of this event is ongoing,’ the Fabricator General said. ‘We may be years from a definitive answer.’

  ‘Then give us a theory.’

  Servos hummed. Kubik inclined his head. ‘Our adaptation of ork technology is still imperfect. We postulate that we failed to account sufficiently for the variance between our modifications and the originals. It is possible the teleportation of the moon would have been successful had the devices been powered entirely by our own energy sources. The attempted integration, however, failed.’

  ‘The xenos and the human cannot coexist,’ Veritus said quietly.

  ‘Well observed, inquisitor,’ said Kubik. ‘We might hypothesise a technological conflict. One that was resolved with the teleportation of only one half of the moon.’

  ‘To where?’ Koorland asked.

  ‘We do not know.’ Kubik waved his mechanical fingers. ‘The destination is unimportant. Given the energy released, we may presume that what vanished met the same fate upon arrival as that which remained.’ The fingers coiled into tight spirals. The gesture looked very like frustration. ‘These reasons for failure remain conjectural. We will need considerably more experimental data to obtain a more complete understanding of where we succeeded and where we failed. It is unfortunate that none of our sensors survived.’ His optics turned to Koorland. The gaze felt accusatory.

  ‘The equipment on the Herald of Night was destroyed?’ Lansung asked.

  ‘Scanning and recording devices were,’ said Koorland. ‘All circuits were melted when the kill-teams were teleported back to the ship.’

  ‘Very unfortunate,’ Kubik said. ‘Very unfortunate.’

  Koorland had felt little sympathy for Kubik’s disappointment at that moment. He felt even less now. The crowd noises that reached his ears were the voices of people who had experienced true loss, not the private disappointment of the Mechanicus.

  Yet the citizens of Terra were celebrating. Ceremonies were being held in every chapel and cathedral. The dead were mourned, and the Emperor was thanked. The ceremonies began in the false day and continued into the hard night. With the coming of night, the festivals began too. In the courtyards of hab complexes, on roofs of manufactoria, in the streets and in the marketplaces, the crowds gathered. They sang their praise of the Emperor. They celebrated the valour of the warriors who had destroyed the face in the sky, the face that had mocked them, threatened them, and shouted ‘I AM SLAUGHTER!’ at the world for so many days. They celebrated the fall of the face of the Beast. They celebrated as if the war had been won.

  Koorland did not begrudge the people their celebration. That they could rejoice at all was cause for hope. But there was a sound he did not like. He had heard it since he had landed, after the Thunderhawks had escaped the meteor storm. He heard it now: two syllables that rose between the prayers to the Emperor. He heard his name.

  He was the hero of Terra. He had returned bloodied from Ullanor, only to wreak vengeance on the Beast and banish it from the skies. He was the author of this victory.

  Koorland accepted he was the author of this night. He wondered whether it was proper to call it a victory. A battle had been won, at the cost of
a new catastrophe. And the war was not won. He had only destroyed one of the Beast’s masks. The true monster was still on Ullanor, enthroned in the capital of his newborn empire.

  ‘Congratulations, Lord Guilliman.’

  Koorland winced at the use of the title. He glanced to his right. Veritus had joined him at the rampart. Koorland grunted. He didn’t ask how Veritus had known he would be here. He did wish it was Vangorich who was standing there. ‘For what, inquisitor?’ he asked.

  ‘For the Deathwatch. For its official recognition by the High Lords.’

  ‘That was nothing more than what the Council had agreed to, prior to the mission.’ Mesring, he was sure, would still have objected. But Mesring had not been present in the Great Chamber. He was, it was said, resting. If so, that was an improvement over raving and screaming. Koorland saw no downside to the Ecclesiarch’s collapse.

  ‘In any event,’ said Veritus, ‘you have what you wanted.’

  Koorland refused to rise to the bait. ‘If you truly believe that was my intent, you are a fool, and I don’t believe you are.’

  Veritus nodded once. ‘Politics are never your intent, Lord Guilliman.’ He emphasised the title, reminding Koorland of what he had become, whether he liked it or not. ‘But politics are your effect. You imposed your will on the Council. They accepted the temporary formation of the Deathwatch, and now that it has proven itself, they are forced to accept its permanence.’

  ‘Permanence? You think the other Chapters will consent to its existence beyond the end of the war?’

  ‘And do you think no further crises will arise which would create the need for it?’

  This was not a debate Koorland was interested in having. Especially not with the Inquisitorial Representative.

  ‘What I think,’ he said, ‘is that you did not seek me out to offer congratulations.’

  ‘No.’ The old man’s gaze was lidded and dark. ‘The Deathwatch did well on the attack moon. Your strategy against the Beast is sound. I am curious, then. How will you use it on Ullanor? How will you decapitate the orks?’

  Again Koorland wished Veritus away and Vangorich present. He did not trust the inquisitor. Even though he would reveal his plan of attack to the Council, he recoiled from the idea of Veritus having advance knowledge of it.

  Koorland shrugged. He had no plan for Veritus to learn. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  He was surprised to hear Veritus express sympathy. ‘I do not envy you the responsibility of this decision. We live in a dark age. The orks are stronger and more advanced than they have ever been, and the Imperium cannot do what once it could. We have fallen far.’

  The admission took Koorland aback. It seemed that it was Veritus who wished to speak. Behold a wonder, he thought. The Inquisition seeks to unburden itself.

  ‘I have read the chronicles,’ Koorland said, hoping to prompt more from Veritus.

  ‘They are far from complete. So much has been forgotten in a thousand years.’ Veritus paused. ‘There are archives…’ he began, hesitated again, then continued. ‘During the Great Crusade, we would have had the means to counter the Beast’s weapons.’

  ‘I can well believe it.’

  Veritus changed the subject abruptly. ‘Have you thought about how the Deathwatch will neutralise the ork witches?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Koorland asked, wondering how much Veritus knew.

  ‘I have seen the Black Templars’ data,’ the inquisitor said. ‘The witches, I would think, are key. Kill them, and you have your decapitation.’

  Koorland sighed. Why did he think there was anything he knew that Veritus did not? ‘True,’ he said.

  ‘How will the Deathwatch destroy them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said again. Dark laughter welled up from his chest. ‘Like you said, if this were the Great Crusade, we would have the means. Vulkan mentioned a special force – anti-psykers called Sisters of Silence – who would have been sent against the witches.’

  ‘The Sisters of Silence,’ said Veritus. ‘So named for the vow of silence. They were warriors of a particularly rare sort. They were psychic blanks. Their mere presence disrupted a psyker’s ability.’

  ‘You seem to know quite a bit about them.’

  He wondered how. The archives of the Inquisition were deep, their memories long. But Veritus had the knowledge so easily at hand. Veritus nodded, but offered no explanation.

  ‘Such a force would be a gift from the Emperor,’ Koorland said. ‘If we could neutralise the greenskin psykers, then decapitation would be possible. But as you say, we have fallen since the days of the Great Crusade.’

  Veritus was quiet for a long time. Then he said, ‘Not all have fallen.’

  ‘Who hasn’t?’

  ‘The Sisters of Silence.’

  ‘They still exist?’

  Veritus nodded. ‘I believe so. Some.’

  Where? Koorland tried to say. His tongue refused to obey him. The silence he had confronted since Ullanor rushed towards him, and it was not the thing he had believed. It was not the judgement of the past. It was the presence of fate.

  ‘Where?’ he managed, speaking not to Veritus, but to the silence.

  ‘Do you believe him?’ Thane asked.

  ‘Do we have a choice?’ Koorland replied.

  They were in Thane’s quarters, in the small office outside his meditation cell. There were the bare necessities for command – a desk, two chairs, a vox-unit. A stained-glass portrait of Dorn covered the lone window.

  The warriors of the Last Wall were stationed in the Imperial Fists barracks at the base of Daylight Wall. There were too many empty cells, Koorland thought. Too many reminders of compounded loss. At least some were occupied.

  ‘He hasn’t given us much to go on,’ said Thane.

  ‘I don’t think he has much more.’

  Thane shook his head. ‘The Inquisitorial Representative is urging you to seek a myth, using a few uncertain clues as a guide. This really was Veritus?’

  ‘And he wishes to accompany you.’

  ‘How reassuring. He…’ Thane stopped. ‘Me?’ he said.

  ‘This won’t be the only Deathwatch mission,’ said Koorland. ‘We can’t attack Ullanor yet, but there are other targets that will make a difference. Mine is the ultimate responsibility and command for the whole. I must remain here. So yes, you and Squad Gladius.’

  Thane frowned. He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘I will do as you command, of course,’ he said.

  ‘But you have another concern.’

  ‘As Chapter Master of the Fists Exemplar, yes.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I have repeatedly ordered the return of the rest of the fleet. Especially after our losses, we need the reinforcement to fulfil our duty of defence of Terra.’

  ‘Spoken like a true son of Dorn,’ said Koorland.

  ‘I ask to be nothing else.’

  ‘Repeated orders, you said?’

  Thane nodded. ‘Most recently just before we departed for the ork base.’ He picked up a parchment and presented it to Koorland.

  ‘Is that the response?’ Koorland asked as he took it.

  ‘No. It’s a message from the Adeptus Astra Telepathica confirming that there has been no response.’

  ‘You have had no news from them?’

  ‘Nothing more recent than what the Black Templars relayed.’

  ‘The worst may have befallen them.’

  Thane nodded again.

  ‘That doesn’t satisfy you,’ said Koorland.

  ‘I have considered that possibility. It could well be the truth. I was cut off from that portion of the fleet, and there were Traitors in the field as well as orks. Even so. All the ships destroyed without being able to send a single message?’

  ‘That does seem unlikely,’ Koorland admitted.
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  ‘That unlikelihood in those particular circumstances concerns me.’

  ‘With justification,’ said Koorland. ‘However, what action can you take?’

  Thane grimaced in frustration. ‘None,’ he said.

  ‘You are needed on this mission more than you are on Terra,’ Koorland went on. ‘And as I told you, Veritus is going too.’

  Thane let out a bark of mirthless laughter. ‘We aren’t just going where an inquisitor points us. We will be led by the Inquisitorial Representative himself. We will trust a High Lord not to take us to destruction?’

  ‘No,’ said Koorland. ‘We aren’t going to trust him at all. He knows the way to where he thinks you may find the Sisters of Silence. Use his information. Listen to what he has to say. But the mission is yours. You are a Chapter Master leading Adeptus Astartes. The Deathwatch is not the Inquisition’s to command.’

  ‘Agreed. He’ll try to assume that authority, though. That’s a certainty.’

  ‘His tactics do not appear to be subtle. So far, at least. His power grabs have been accompanied by a clear belief in his entitlement. All the same, be wary, especially when you find the Sisters.’

  ‘You mean if, don’t you?’

  ‘No.’ Koorland spat the word out. If he denied the possibility of failure with enough force, perhaps he could will what the Imperium needed into existence. ‘They must be found. Without them…’ He stopped himself. Had he been about to say that unless the myths were discovered to exist, the war was hopeless? No. He would not permit himself so unworthy a thought. But oh, the weight of the defeats. It grew and grew, his shoulders straining to hold it up. Even the victories were partial, and came at so great a cost they were difficult to regard as triumphs. And so many victories led only to greater defeats. He and Thane had already found one myth, only to lose Vulkan forever on the blood-soaked ground of another legend.

  And now another search. Once again on the sword point of desperation.

  ‘No,’ Koorland said again. ‘When you find them. You will.’