Deathwatch

by Steve Parker

  Compared to such withering tests, close-combat cycles in the Pankrateon sounded like a grand reprieve. Of course, they proved to be anything but. In the coming cycle, the group to which Karras was assigned would train knife, sword, double knife, double sword and empty-hand techniques under the critical eyes of Watch Sergeants Kulle and Coteaz. The latter was a veteran Deathwatch squad leader, originally of the Crimson Fists Chapter, who had famously slain an ork warboss that outweighed him six-to-one at close quarters using only a standard-issue combat blade. The scarred mess of his face, ruined almost beyond recognisable humanity, was ample testimony; Karras could believe the story all too easily looking at that battered visage.

  The Pankrateon was a massive close-combat training facility roughly cross-shaped in layout. The main area was a dark central hall, its arched ceiling some thirty metres above a stone floor stained with thousands of years of shed blood. Brothers got cut here, and not infrequently. It was a rule that the flagstones of the Pankrateon did not get washed. Blood spilled was blood honoured, a mark of commitment to the ultimate goal of all this hard work. The Pankrateon exceeded even the kill-blocks in terms of serious injuries reported and formed a part of Deathwatch training every bit as critical.

  The high ceiling was supported by cylindrical pillars set eight metres apart and running in two rows down the entire length of the main hall. These were no ordinary pillars. At their base, they boasted a profusion of multi-jointed mechanical arms, each ending in a metal appendage into which could be placed a wide variety of weapons: from swords and hammers to barbed whips and great crushing claws. Set on the surface of each pillar, winking from between the paired sets of arms, were target lights. These glowed red until struck, at which point they would turn momentarily blue. With this change, the arms linked to that light would stop attacking. The servo-skull embedded in stone above the top pair of arms would register the successful strike. Then the light would change back, the arms would reactivate, and the Space Marine would find himself under full assault once again.

  Karras, his fatigues growing damp with a light sweat, ducked just as his pillar sent a slashing horizontal blow at his head. Air whooshed above him. He stepped in, careful to check the movement of the other three arms he faced, and stabbed upwards with his training knife.

  The tip hit the target light’s hard, scratch-proof dome. It went blue and, for a second, the attacking arms froze. Karras stepped out, breathing hard, and rolled his shoulders, readying himself for the pillar-drone’s next tireless assault. The pillar’s embedded skull sounded a warning tone, the light flickered from blue back to red, and the arms began slicing the air once again, metal claws and sword-blades flashing.

  Around Karras, his fellow Deathwatch trainees fought just as hard, grunting with effort as they pushed themselves to keep up with the fighting machines. This was training unlike anything Karras had known. Back at Logopol, the Death Spectres had trained with each other, learning from the mistakes and successes of their kin as much as from their own. But fighting fellow Space Marines was less than ideal given the special remit of the Watch. It was the combat habits and patterns of the main xenos threats which had to be learned and overcome. Karras’s pillar fought him according to a pattern taken from sensorium records of a mid-sized tyranid variant, large enough to be a serious threat, but not too large for hand-to-hand combat. Thus, four arms assailed him instead of two, and they were fast, striking like scorpion tails with lethal intent.

  The Watch sergeants paced up and down the main hall, watching the unarmoured Space Marines fighting with all they had, barking at them to work harder, fight smarter.

  ‘Keep moving, damn you!’ shouted Coteaz through ragged lips. The torn flesh of his cheeks and mouth gave his voice a lisping quality. ‘Footwork. Footwork. A stationary Space Marine is a dead Space Marine.’

  Karras put a burst of extra energy into his movement, slipped under another assault from the arms bearing knives, and scored another strike on the middle target light. The pillar’s skull beeped an alarm and froze. The light turned blue.

  ‘Sergeant,’ someone called out.

  Karras looked towards the sound. Coteaz limped over to an extremely stocky Space Marine just two pillars away on the left. Then the pillar in front of Karras beeped, and the arms whistled out towards him again, abruptly recalling his attention. His training knife parried a blow that could have given him a very nasty chest wound. As he blocked and slipped another series of blistering swipes, he heard the stocky warrior speak.

  ‘I think I broke it.’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense, Voss. No one has ever…’

  ‘Someone just did. Sorry, sergeant.’

  ‘Dorn’s blood! How did–?’

  Karras scored another disabling hit on his foe and took the second’s respite to glance again in Voss’s direction.

  The Imperial Fist. The one they’re calling Omni.

  Voss was by far the shortest Space Marine Karras had ever laid eyes on, but his muscular bulk went a step beyond compensation. His arms, his shoulders, his chest; every muscle group on his squat frame rippled with thick, hard mass. Back on Occludus, it would not have been tolerated. Such muscularity often came at the price of agility and speed.

  Then again, perhaps not. In that oh-so-momentary glance, Karras had seen Voss holding up a mechanical arm that he had somehow ripped right out of the training pillar. He lifted it as if offering it to Coteaz in embarrassed tribute. It was a feat that should only have been possible in power armour. Omni had used his bare hands.

  Coteaz never got the chance to comment further. At that moment, Sergeant Kulle came storming out of one of the side halls and urged Coteaz to follow him.

  ‘You need to see this,’ he insisted.

  Coteaz, noting the look in Kulle’s eyes, turned from Voss without another word and fell into step behind his fellow Watch sergeant, following him to the Pankrateon’s west chamber where one of the facility’s two sunken combat pits was located.

  Two minutes later, Kulle reappeared and shouted for everyone else to follow him.

  Karras withdrew from his combat-drone’s active range. The moment he stepped out of the machine’s engagement field, the scanners in the servo-skull blinked green, then off.

  He fell into step behind the others as they followed Kulle through a short hall of black stone into a room with circular tiers sunk into the floor. There were five of these tiers, in the middle of which was a pit some twelve metres across and four metres deep. From the base of that pit came the sound of harsh impacts, of metal clashing, bursts of staccato sound interspersed with brief pauses. Looking at the other battle-brothers around him as he stepped to the rim, Karras noticed the hard looks on the faces of some, the knowing grins on the faces of others. Reaching the rim, he looked down and saw a whirling, darting blur of a figure being assaulted from three sides by heavy, multi-limbed close-combat servitors.

  It was Siefer Zeed. Ghost. The alabaster skin and black-silk hair were unmistakable. Like all those present save the Watch sergeants and their Mechanicus support, Zeed wore black training fatigues. They contrasted sharply with his pale form. One of the training servitors sent a blistering diagonal axe-blow towards Zeed’s clavicle. The Raven Guard slipped it and struck the servitor’s chassis targets with three hard, open-handed blows. The servitor’s plasteel torso rang with the impacts.

  One of the others servitors, this one armed with a sword and spiked shield, burst forwards while Zeed was withdrawing from the range of the other. For a moment, it looked like the servitor’s sword would bite down into Zeed’s upper back, but the Raven Guard had noticed the movement behind him. He stepped right as he spun to face his attacker, somehow still managing to keep himself just a hair beyond the range of the others, and threw out a hand to redirect the servitor’s downward force at the wrist. The sword bit into the pit’s sandy floor at the very moment Zeed moved inside, checking the spiked shield with his right hand and hammering a straight left into the glowing target that represented
his enemy’s face.

  The cybernetic drone staggered backwards, arms out for balance, only to receive a thunderous kick in its plated abdomen. It dropped hard to the sand, striking what passed for its head against the curving granite wall of the pit. There, it twitched a moment, its organic brain rocked, until subroutines kicked in and it began to right itself. In the meantime, Zeed had kicked the legs out from under the third, dropping it to its backside in front of him. It swiped at him from the ground, lashing out with the double short-swords it held, but it could not reach him. He ignored its futile attacks and focused on the axe-wielder, which had begun to close on him again.

  Without turning or looking up, Zeed called out, ‘Next setting, damn it! They’re too slow!’

  From a few metres to Karras’s right, someone growled and muttered, ‘Arrogant fool!’

  Someone else grunted in agreement, but no one withdrew from the edge of the pit. Arrogant or not, Zeed was worthy of an audience. Karras saw that he had misjudged the strange battle-brother. That porcelain face was flawless not because he was untested or a gun-shy coward, but because no blade had ever been fast enough to touch it. The same was not true of Zeed’s body. One didn’t take combat to this level without paying the price. His white skin was laced like a roadmap of hundreds of scars, some broad and deep, a sign of tearing or gouging, some long and fine, where sharp blades had slashed his flesh.

  On the other side of the pit’s rim, Watch Sergeant Kulle glanced at Coteaz, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘Not I,’ said Coteaz to his fellow. ‘I won’t be responsible for the first Pankrateon death in a century.’

  ‘He can handle it,’ said Kulle. ‘Look at him. See for yourself.’

  Whatever look crossed Coteaz’s face then, Karras couldn’t read it. The grizzled old Space Marine’s visage was too much of a mess to discern any clear expression, but his words were anything but vague. ‘All I see is a showboater revelling in attention. The lesson here is of humility and of knowing one’s limitations, as you’ll see when this all turns ill.’

  Karras felt Coteaz was wrong. Down in the pit, Zeed’s attention was focused like a las-beam on the deadly ballet in which he had the central role. Zeed never once looked up at the Space Marines ringing the pit, despite the supportive shouts of Ghost! from some of those present. The rest watched in either brooding or respectful silence. Zeed was putting his life on the line to test his capabilities and to try to move beyond them. His movements were so fast and precise they almost seemed choreographed. It was mesmerising.

  No one would leave while he still fought. If Space Marines respected anything, it was proficiency in battle, and Karras doubted anyone here would honestly argue they were the equal of the Raven Guard in close quarters. Not now. How could they? Karras knew for certain that he himself was not. Had he been permitted to combine his own combat skills with the power of his gift, the story would be quite different, but that lessened Zeed’s achievement not one bit.

  Ignoring Coteaz’s concerns, Watch Sergeant Kulle drew a slate-shaped device from a pocket on his webbing and tapped its face with his index finger. ‘Program Orpheus,’ he called down into the pit. ‘Mind yourself, Raven Guard!’

  The Space Marines around the pit could see the change that took place immediately. Activation lights on the servitors’ chassis blinked in faster tempo. As aggressive as they had been earlier, they became more so now, leaping to attack in tight coordination with each other, their weapons whistling as they churned the air just inches from Zeed’s unprotected flesh.

  Unprotected, but fast. Despite the intensity of the new assault, Zeed was somehow always just outside their reach, or just inside the arc of their blows. It was then, once he was inside, that he would strike like bolter-fire, rattling off a rapid series of strikes to his enemies’ glowing target lights. He was, in a word, incredible.

  Karras didn’t dare blink, such was the speed of what played out below. Zeed seemed to have fallen into a kind of trance. Though the warp field suppressor had locked away Karras’s powers, he was sure he felt something from the Raven Guard. It was a kind of mindlessness, as if his noisy, cocky, boisterous personality had melted away into the substance of his surroundings. He was one with his opponents, each an inseparable part of this expression of artful violence, and as such, knew every microscopic change in their movement even as it happened. In a way, he was as much a machine now as they were. They could not touch him.

  But they do not tire, thought Karras. And pressed like this, even a Space Marine will exhaust himself eventually.

  Zeed struck the metal knee-joint of one servitor and it staggered, dropping to the ground on its other knee. The Raven Guard leapt forwards, sprang off the downed servitor’s exposed shoulder and, with the extra height and momentum, hammered a leaping kick into the head of the drone closing on his right.

  Despite being deep in a battle-trance, he summoned his voice.

  ‘Higher, damn it,’ he barked up at the Watch sergeants. ‘Faster. Make them faster.’

  Above the clanging and ringing of the combat below, Karras heard Watch Sergeant Coteaz curse aloud.

  Kulle tapped the screen of his slate again. Coteaz grabbed his shoulder. ‘No one has gone higher than Orpheus against three drones,’ he hissed. ‘Don’t do this.’

  ‘Someone must raise the bar,’ Kulle snapped back, ‘or none of us will ever go beyond what we are.’

  ‘Then his blood will stain your honour, not mine. I’ll not be party to this.’

  For a moment, they stood there, eyes level, communicating so much without need for words. Then Coteaz turned and pushed his way from the edge of the pit, cursing as he went.

  ‘Program Umenides,’ Kulle shouted down to Zeed. ‘Extremis Ultra. You break new ground today, Raven Guard.’

  The shouts of Ghost! became louder.

  Watching all this, Karras felt a knot twist in his primary stomach. In Kulle’s eyes, he now noted something he had seen many times on the battlefield: tunnel-vision. The Watch sergeant’s focus had narrowed to encompass only the moment, only that which lay before him. He was not seeing the bigger picture, not staying mindful of the consequences should something go wrong. Together, complicit in this testing beyond limits, Kulle and Zeed risked too much. To have Zeed die here in a training pit, never having taken Second Oath, would stain the honour of the Deathwatch and the Raven Guard both.

  Karras felt a weight settle over him. He looked at the battle-brothers on either side. They too, all of them, had eyes and minds only for the deadly game below. It was up to him, then.

  Reluctant as he was, Karras began to edge around the pit towards Kulle. Those who found him suddenly blocking their view simply craned their necks to keep watching and settled again once he had passed. The ringing of hard impacts sounded again and again from below. To this was now added grunts of greater and greater physical effort and growls of aggression-fuelled assault.

  Then there came a new sound. It was the sound of steel on flesh. A roar of anger followed immediately. Karras’s enhanced hearing heard blood spatter on sand.

  Extremis Ultra indeed. A fresh rip in the meat of Zeed’s left shoulder was pumping blood down his arm. Deep as the wound was, it was only tissue damage. The Raven Guard’s enhanced physiology would stop that flow within seconds and a waxy secretion would seal it against further loss. But a wound was a wound. Its significance was greater than the flash of pain it caused. It marked the turning point. While the drones were getting faster and more relentless, Zeed was slowing at last.

  Karras reached Kulle, extended a hand, and gripped the Watch sergeant’s arm at the elbow.

  ‘How do you see this ending, brother-sergeant?’ Karras demanded. ‘He has proven himself and more.’

  Kulle was surprised at the intrusion, the sudden imposing presence of the red-eyed Death Spectre beside him. Not just any Death Spectre, but a Codicier, senior in his Chapter’s Librarius. To a Silver Skull, the will of a Librarian was not something to be ignored.

  Kul
le looked down at the slate in his hand. The screen showed a graphical representation of the dial he had turned almost all the way to the right. The needle was deep in the red.

  Down in the pit, Zeed battered one drone aside with a lateral elbow-strike, kicked another in the chest, and rolled away. When he rose, Karras could see that he was bleeding from a trio of shallow slashes on his chest and back. Nevertheless, his coal-black eyes still blazed with sharp focus. He was enjoying this, revelling in the battle-high.

  ‘Yesss!’ he hissed at the drones as they ambled forwards, weapons raised. ‘To me, you mindless mannequins! To me!’

  His thick blood dripped on the sand between his feet. Karras could smell its ferrous tang mixing with the scent of sweat and hot metal.

  Suddenly, the drones froze. Their target lights faded from red to blue. Their arms dropped to their sides, weapons lowered, motors humming to a stop.

  Zeed stared at them, momentarily confused, still holding his combat stance.

  After a second, he dropped his stance and looked up at the pit’s rim. His eyes sought out and found Sergeant Kulle.

  ‘I wasn’t done,’ said the Raven Guard flatly.

  Karras was surprised. He was expecting adrenaline-soaked rage from the long-haired battle-brother, but Zeed seemed to have switched off as easily, and almost as abruptly, as the drones had.

  ‘Look around you, Ghost,’ Kulle called down, and Karras noted that even the sergeants had started to use the nickname. ‘You have the eye of everyone in the Pankrateon. We all know what you have achieved here today. But you’ve distracted your brothers from their own training long enough. Extremis Ultra.’ He shook his head. ‘Truly, you have made a name for yourself today. Let it stand for now. The others must look to their own training if they are ever to rival you in the pit.’

  That drew mutterings from some; typical warrior pride. It was pride only, however, without any real conviction behind it. The others couldn’t deny Kulle’s words. Zeed’s proficiency had held them spellbound. He had dominated three armed attackers of inhuman speed and resilience with nothing but his natural weapons: hands, feet, knees and elbows. That he had done so without power armour or even basic combat-plate was the greatest proof of his skill.