by Braden Campbell, Mark Clapham, Ben Counter, Chris Dows, Peter Fehervari, Steve Lyons
Antor was running again; only now he was one of five Space Marines, rather than eight. They had left three behind, trapped by adamantium-plated shields: one of them certainly dead, the others facing an arduous space walk to the launch bays with limited air reserves, in the deadliest possible circumstances.
Lokar held up a hand to halt them. His head was cocked. ‘Do you hear that?’ he asked. His senses were keener than those of his brothers, a quirk of his gene-seed.
‘I hear more explosions,’ said Grennon. He was heavy-set, stolid. Antor hadn’t seen his Chapter’s symbol before: the silhouette of a grasping claw, picked out by orange flames.
‘We are wasting time,’ growled Sanctimus.
‘Something has changed. The vibration of the deck plates,’ said Lokar. ‘I think… yes, we have lost the starboard engines.’
A moment later, vox-chatter confirmed it, along with another chilling development.
‘All battle-brothers to the port aft cargo hold,’ Watch Captain Gharvil instructed from his command post on the bridge. ‘The enemy ship is coming alongside. Repeat, all battle-brothers to the port aft cargo hold. Prepare to repel boarders.’
Antor remembered how he had felt, back then.
He remembered the knot that had begun to form in his stomach, tightening with every blind corner he had turned, every obstacle he had found in his path. It was not fear, far from it.
It was a sense of his duty, imperilled.
But that was only natural, wasn’t it?
His ship had been under attack. His battle-brothers were fighting to protect it, to protect him and everyone else on board, and he yearned to fight alongside them – but no matter how hard he tried, how fast he ran, he couldn’t reach them.
He knew that the others, his four disparate allies, felt it too.
Lokar had been taking out his frustrations on them.
‘Russ, but the greenest Blood Claw back home is faster than the four of you!’ he snarled, as another compromised section of the ship was sealed off just as they reached it.
‘You brought us this way,’ Sanctimus snapped back at him, ‘insisting that your “instincts” were superior to our Emperor-given gifts.’
Lokar bridled. ‘My instincts are as much the All-Father’s gift as–’
‘Please, brothers,’ Antor intervened, well-used to mediating between those of shorter temper than he. ‘Listen.’
He was following the progress of the battle through his earpiece. Three of the Thunderhawks had been destroyed; the last had limped its way back into its launch bay. The Deathwatch had taken out most of the smaller enemy ships, at least. The Incontrovertible Truth was crippled, however, and unable to throw off the Chaos vessel as it extended a docking claw and clamped onto the strike cruiser’s hull.
‘They’re blasting their way through the airlock,’ Antor reported quietly. His words had the desired effect, refocusing minds upon their immediate predicament.
‘I say we stand the best chance if we descend to one of the lower decks before making our way forward,’ suggested Casella.
‘Let’s do it,’ said Sanctimus, seizing the opportunity to take the lead. Lokar scowled at the Ultramarine, a growl rattling in the back of his throat, but he followed along with the others.
According to the vox-net, fifteen Space Marines – around half of those left aboard – had made it to the cargo hold. The watch captain himself had joined them. They were waiting behind barriers hastily assembled from sturdy cargo crates when the inner airlock door was wrenched from its runners. Frag grenades rolled through the aperture and exploded, loosing shrapnel, smoke and confusion. Then their attackers appeared, marching brazenly out of the thick fog, hammering bolt-rounds out ahead of them.
For a long moment, all Antor could hear through his earpiece was gunfire, then Watch Captain Gharvil’s voice, clearly under enormous strain, came through.
‘All battle-brothers to the port aft cargo hold, immediately. We’re under attack…’ There was a pause then, and more gunfire. ‘…attack by Traitor Space Marines – Black Legion!’
The knot in Antor’s stomach twisted. The watch captain could have breathed no viler a curse than that name. And suddenly, he felt that pain in his heart again, sharper this time, as if he had been stabbed through the chest with an icicle. It felt like pain, sadness, loss and the infinite cold of the void.
The ticking of his lashed-together machinery brought Antor back to the present, to his cabin. His heartbeats had sped up.
Even now, four years on, the memory of that day had that effect on him. He felt as helpless, as frustrated, as he had back then.
He could taste blood again. He was sweating and his robes clung to his muscular torso.
He had never made it to his destination – though his ad hoc team had come close, so tantalisingly close. Casella’s plan had been a good one. They had threaded their way through the Incontrovertible Truth’s undercroft bilges, through the engine rooms where servitors laboured over spitting rune panels and steaming pistons, though most had already been burnt or crippled in the effort.
They had agreed that the conveyors couldn’t be trusted, and had been looking for another way up to the mid-decks when Watch Captain Gharvil had perished.
The battle-brothers in the cargo hold had fought well – by their own accounts – but they had been badly outnumbered. Ten, eleven, twelve Black Legionnaires had fallen, but more had poured through the airlock behind them, until the defenders’ barriers had been swept aside and they had been overrun.
It was reported that Gharvil had stood toe to toe with three opponents, slaying one with his power sword and badly wounding a second, giving the remainder of the invading force pause and buying time for his few surviving brothers to withdraw.
‘Four of us made it out,’ a breathless voice crackled over the vox-channels. ‘We have sealed off the hold, but that won’t delay them long. We must deny them the ship! They–’ The rest was swallowed by a furious blizzard of static.
‘They’re jamming our communications,’ said Sanctimus. ‘We need to reach that hold.’
‘No. You heard what happened up there,’ insisted Lokar. ‘Now is not the time for a frontal assault. We need to employ stealth and cunning. In my Chapter–’
‘That sounds like the justification of a coward!’ snapped the Ultramarine.
The Space Wolf bristled and squared up to him.
‘There must be other groups like ours,’ said Antor quickly, ‘each cut off from the others. If we could find them–’
‘What hope of that, without the vox-net?’ asked Casella. ‘Our attackers are employing the classic tactic – divide and conquer.’
‘We should follow our commander’s final orders,’ considered Grennon.
‘And go marching to the slaughter?’ Lokar scoffed. ‘The situation has changed. Our watch captain is dead. Most of our brothers are dead, and we can’t contact the rest.’
Antor leapt into the ensuing silence. ‘They want our ship. Or any ship, perhaps. They can’t have known exactly where we’d emerge from the warp, yet they were waiting for us. I wonder how long they were waiting?’
‘They could have destroyed us,’ agreed Grennon.
‘Instead, they sent a boarding party knowing some of them would die,’ said Antor.
‘What does any of this matter?’ growled Lokar, impatiently.
‘If we know what they want,’ said Antor, ‘we can predict their next move.’
‘What if there is something aboard this ship?’ suggested Grennon. ‘Something being conveyed to Watch Fortress Erioch? Is that possible?’
‘I don’t know,’ confessed Antor. ‘The watch captain would have known. If there is, they will likely come looking for it. Or for us.’
‘We wouldn’t have to go to them,’ Casella realised. ‘We can find a good defensible position and lay an ambush for them.’
Lokar’s eyes flashed. ‘Stealth and cunning. We can strike at our enemies from the shadows, tear out their thro
ats before they even know we’re there.’
Antor Delassio waited.
They had planned their ambush carefully, and not without further disagreement. They remained on one of the lower decks, assuming that anything of value – and so secret that they hadn’t been briefed about it – would be hidden down there.
They had chosen a rarely used passageway, but one that – with so many rendered impassable – their enemies were almost certain to pass through. Casella had shot out two lumen-globes, cloaking the Deathwatch in darkness. So much damage had been done throughout the ship that his sabotage would likely go unrecognised as such.
The servitors had failed. The last engine had sputtered out some twenty minutes ago. The Incontrovertible Truth was now a dead husk, drifting helplessly. All was silent, but for the occasional creaks of tortured adamantium settling into place.
Antor crouched out of sight. He had made sure that his armour was sealed, giving off no emissions or heat signatures that an auspex could detect. He had cleaned and reloaded his hand flamer.
Brother Sanctimus had agreed to wait one hour. If there were no signs of Black Legionnaires by then, the remaining Deathwatch would seek them out.
‘They are probably storming the bridge already,’ he had grumbled.
In the event, they appeared long before the hour was up: four of them, to begin with, advancing raggedly by sections. Antor hadn’t expected them to be so disciplined. Their black power armour had burnished golden highlights. On their shoulders, each bore an eye symbol staring out of an eight-pointed star, and their bearing betrayed a monstrous pride.
After all they have done, thought Antor, barely noticing that his right hand had curled into a fist, too aware of his own heartbeats in his ears.
He couldn’t see his battle-brothers from his position. They had no way of signalling each other to coordinate their attack.
Lokar acted first, as everyone had known he would. Once the traitors had passed his hiding place, he fired a burst of expertly placed bolt-rounds into their backs. Barely had they begun to react when Brothers Sanctimus and Grennon tackled them from left and right. Antor relished the screams their chainswords made as their teeth chewed on the traitors’ armour.
Blood rushed to his head as he uncoiled himself and burst through the storeroom door. Red blotches filled his vision and, as he blinked them away, he almost stumbled. Consequently, he was a fraction of a second behind Casella, emerging from the doorway opposite to block the traitors’ path, his boltgun already roaring.
The nearest traitor saw Antor’s misstep and barrelled towards him, hoping to overrun him as he brought Ignatus to bear. He wasn’t fast enough, and was met by a gout of flaming promethium to the face which sent him reeling.
Too bad he was wearing his helmet, Antor thought. He fancied he could detect the pungent smell of burnt flesh all the same.
He struck downward with his chainsword, spattering his artisan armour in gore. He had already raised his arm again when he realised that his enemy was dead. Abashed, he thumbed his chainsword’s activation rune, letting it sputter to a halt. He turned to face his battle-brothers, but saw no reproach in their eyes.
Antor paused. The battle was over. When… When had he…
He shook his head in confusion. The events of the past few minutes were already a blur to him. He remembered Sanctimus standing tall in the thick of the melee bellowing orders, which Grennon and none of the others had followed. He remembered the smell of electrical discharge, fire and blood.
The Black Legionnaires had fought hard, but the Deathwatch’s numbers and the element of surprise had ultimately won the day.
With their deaths, the knot in Antor’s stomach unwound a little.
‘Four down,’ Casella gloated.
Sanctimus nodded curtly. ‘We did well. Better than I expected, thank the Emperor.’ Casella was nursing a lame arm, while a plasma pistol burst had warped one side of Grennon’s chest armour and must have melted the flesh beneath it too. Otherwise, the Ultramarine was right – they were blessedly unscathed.
‘The traitors will have voxed for reinforcements,’ Antor reminded them.
‘We have to move,’ agreed Grennon.
They had pre-planned their escape route. Lokar led the way by virtue of being the fastest of them. He had removed his helmet, and he curled back his lips to expose his fangs. ‘We’ll lay another ambush on another deck. Two, three more times, and these traitors will wish they had never set foot aboard our ship.’
This time, nobody disagreed with him.
Four down, thought Antor. It’s a start, at least.
Further along, they climbed a maintenance ladder, squeezing their armoured bulks through a hatchway designed for serfs and mobile servitors.
Emerging onto the next deck up, they were greeted by a sight that dampened their newfound optimism. There had been a battle here too, but with a very different outcome. Three Deathwatch Space Marines lay sprawled across the deck plates, their bodies burnt, slashed and battered. Antor knew their names; he had been due to fight alongside two of them on Mariach.
A Black Legionnaire, too, had been left where he fell. But only one.
‘Do these savages not even come back for their own dead?’ rumbled Sanctimus.
Lokar sniffed the air. ‘They are still close by. We should move on.’
Before they did, Grennon knelt beside the bodies. He salvaged a handful of bolter clips and tossed them to the others. ‘In case of need.’ He eyed a powerful plasma gun, clutched tightly in the Black Legionnaire’s dead hands, before quickly dismissing the idea of wielding a weapon so irredeemably tainted.
Antor was glad when they moved away from that place. The loss of a brother, any brother, was a tragedy. It was a fact of his existence, however, to which he had grown accustomed long ago. And yet, there was something indefinable about this loss that made it weigh heavily upon him. Perhaps it is the premonition of my own fate, he considered.
Little more than a minute later, they heard footsteps: more than a dozen pairs, by his reckoning, half of them heavily armoured, coming their way.
Lokar, as always six steps ahead of the others, flattened himself beside an open hatchway and waited. For the rest of the Space Marines, there was scant cover to be had. Instead, they drew their weapons, ready to defend themselves.
However, the footsteps turned away from them.
‘Sounds like they’re descending a stairway,’ Grennon whispered.
Lokar motioned to the others to stay put, and crept after the footsteps. Antor was amazed at how silent he could be in power armour.
He returned after a couple of minutes to report. ‘Eight traitors, plus degenerate human slaves, headed downward. I don’t think they were a search party – if they were, they weren’t searching very hard. They seemed to know where they were going.’
‘They’re headed for the engine rooms,’ Antor realised.
Sanctimus glared at him accusingly. ‘Then you were wrong. It is our ship they want – and they want it in working order. We should have defended the engines. Or gone to the bridge, as I wished.’
‘Should we go after them?’ asked Grennon.
‘They outnumber us,’ said Lokar, ‘but if we sneak up behind them, Russ willing, we may be able to–’
‘I say we stick to our plan,’ said Casella.
Antor nodded. ‘I agree. The engines are dead. Let the traitors try to repair them if they wish – if that is indeed what they are doing. In the meantime, we shall be hunting down their allies, trapping and exterminating them like rats. If the Emperor is with us, we may find more survivors too and build our numbers.’
His voice, rarely raised in passion, was rich and sonorous. The others listened to it and – somewhat to his surprise – were swayed by it. ‘And if we cannot prevail, and the ship is truly lost… then, brothers, we can take more drastic measures.’
They continued on their way. Antor only wished he felt as confident as he had sounded.
Just h
ours ago, he had known his mission. He had been assigned to a kill team, with a clear chain of command. He had been briefed on his goals, and on the nature of the enemies that would try to keep him from achieving them. He had known exactly what was expected of him. He had been ready to serve – as he always did – diligently.
In spite of his rank in the Blood Angels, Antor had always been content to serve in the Deathwatch, and never to lead.
He hadn’t been prepared for this. None of them had.
Antor Delassio had never lost a battle before. Not before that fateful day.
He had almost begun to believe he never would, that even when he was himself struck down – as one day, inevitably, he would be – his sacrifice would only speed his brothers to victory. He had faced that prospect with his usual equanimity.
The first of his brothers to die that day was Grennon.
They had attacked four more Black Legionnaires. This time, one of the traitors had detected them somehow: an inadvertent sound, something out of place, perhaps a lingering heat trace in the air. He had shouted a warning.
This time, their prey was ready for them.
The leader of the traitors wore a lightning claw – three blades wreathed in a dazzling energy field. When the traitor slashed at Grennon, his armour seemed to warp away from its touch and the blades tore into his chest.
He fought on for a minute – maybe even longer – after that, kept going by the stimulants his armour was pumping into him, by his natural adrenaline and his own sheer bloody-mindedness. Sadly, none of these commodities were inexhaustible.
Eventually, his body had to accept that it was dead.
Lokar went down next, a chainsword cutting deep into his stomach.
And just like that, the odds had shifted.
Sanctimus engaged the leader, the clash of lightning claw and chainsword blade lighting up the passageway. Antor and Casella were left with three Black Legionnaires to deal with, although fortunately two of them were already wounded.
Lokar had rent the armour of one between the ribs, and Antor found the same niche with his blade, cutting into flesh and muscle.
