Deathwatch: Ignition

by Braden Campbell, Mark Clapham, Ben Counter, Chris Dows, Peter Fehervari, Steve Lyons

  Heretic militias had seized planetary capitals. Saboteurs had scuttled Imperial battleships and assassins had murdered priests and lawmakers in their beds. The Emperor’s Children themselves had been seen leading sermons that devolved into rites of excess and pain. Inquisitorial agents had been turned, obfuscating the full scale of the Traitor Legion’s infiltration of the sector.

  The Imperium’s response was inevitable: a crusade that brought millions of Astra Militarum Guardsmen, dozens of ships of the Imperial Navy and a handful of Space Marine strike forces to the Vensine sector. Kolagar had been one of the first planets seized in a cruel and brutal campaign fought through its subequatorial jungles and across the steppes of its northern continent. The Astra Militarum had committed whole regiments to fighting the combination of corrupted native troops and cultist militias that infested the planet, and after a full year of fighting, Kolagar was subjugated. Its hastily constructed airfields were converted into a staging post for campaigns launched against the nearby rebel worlds, and the planet became a link in the chain feeding men and starships into the front lines of what would become the Vensine Crusade.

  Kolagar was supposed to be safe. It was supposed to be an example of the crusade’s costly but inevitable victory. But then the sslyth, alien mercenaries who had plagued the sector for centuries as pirates and swords for hire, had struck from the jungle to ambush, mutilate and kill. The patterns and frequency of the attacks suggested more than a simple band of alien predators. The Ordo Xenos of the Inquisition took an interest, and its agents identified the three nidi around Phoenicus Peak as the source of the sslyth attacks.

  Gydrael had wondered if the sslyth were there not just as opportunists and scavengers, but as participants in the Emperor’s Children rebellion. The Ordo Xenos suspected the same, but investigating the xenos’ motives was always secondary to their extermination.

  It was no great surprise to learn the Emperor’s Children were working directly with the sslyth, fostering in them strange new forms of worship and supplying them with weaponry. A threat on Kolagar, a world already supposed to be conquered, would distract the Imperial forces from expanding the Vensine Crusade and pushing back the heretics from the edges of their domain. It would tie up whole regiments in a campaign of extermination to flush out the resilient sslyth warclades one brood at a time, and turn the campaign’s first victory into an unending cycle of massacre and reprisal.

  But there was another way to fight the xenos.

  Each nidus was too deep to be struck from the air, and too labyrinthine to be assaulted by a regular ground force. But one Space Marine, more than the equal of any sslyth and with the support of the Ordo, could reach the heart of the nest alone. And if he was equipped not just with gun or blade but with an infectious agent gene-keyed to the sslyth nervous system, he could wipe out an entire nidus.

  And three such Space Marines, unleashing their virus bombs at the same time, could trigger a cascade that would infect the whole sslyth population of Phoenicus Peak and shatter the xenos presence on Kolagar.

  It would be cause enough to exterminate so many xenos, of course, for every Space Marine harboured a particular scorn and hatred for the alien. But to know he was striking at the plans of the Emperor’s Children as well would make the operation a particularly satisfying fulfilment of duty.

  Zameon Gydrael did not fight for the satisfaction of it. He fought because it was the duty of every Space Marine, of every human being, to strike back at the enemies seeking to bring about the end of the Imperium and the extinction of the human race. But even so, as he left the shrine in the knowledge that the Emperor’s Children would rage at the loss of their xenos allies, he allowed himself a glimmer of anticipation of the victory to come.

  ‘Five heads!’ crowed Hasdrubal over the vox. ‘Five skulls I have taken to be cast into the flame! Ninety-five more and I will carry the jawbone of the last with me. I would wager the count with you, brothers, but you deny yourselves the joy of such things.’

  ‘I’ve breached sea level,’ came Thorne’s voice, ignoring the Storm Lord’s boasting. ‘The sslyth are buried deep. Minimal contact so far.’

  ‘You’re closing in on the nutrient nexus,’ said Decurius. ‘Hold when you reach it. Gydrael, what is your position?’

  ‘At the hatcheries,’ replied Gydrael.

  ‘Then the nexus will be a short distance below you,’ said Decurius. ‘Deploy the virus at the same time, brothers, or the cascade will fail.’

  Gydrael was looking down at a chamber full of sslyth eggs. Each one was translucent, with the embryonic creature inside visible as it writhed and twitched in its nutrient fluid. That fluid was fed by the tendrils coiled along the floor and around each egg, drawing sustenance from the walls of the nidus and feeding it in.

  There were well over a hundred eggs in the chamber. Several more chambers branched off, and others off them in turn – Nidus Tertiam contained tens of thousands of eggs, perhaps hundreds of thousands, each one a new enemy of the Imperium. The virus bomb would kill a good proportion of them instantly, but the infection cascade would wipe out every single one.

  Gydrael had to pass through to reach a shaft three chambers away, leading downwards. He stepped carefully past the eggs, finding the floor spongy under his feet. He held his plasma pistol in front of him, taking care to avoid disturbing the eggs and rousing the sslyth, but remaining alert for the other dangers he might be walking into.

  The xenos guarded their eggs. With so many of them insensible in the breeding pool they had been slow to respond to Gydrael’s presence, but the awakened sslyth would consider defending the hatcheries a priority. Gydrael was not surprised when he heard movement ahead, no doubt an egg tender who had to be eliminated or avoided before he could reach the nexus at the lowermost level of the nidus.

  Gydrael backed against the wall and glanced into the next chamber.

  The noise was coming not from a sslyth, but from a Space Marine.

  Gydrael sighted down his plasma pistol. Power armour could turn most mundane blows, but a well-placed plasma blast would bore through ceramite. Gydrael sized up the shot even as his mind told him that something was not right.

  Gydrael had been ready to face a traitor of the Emperor’s Children. They had been rarely sighted and even more seldom fought by Imperial forces, but it made sense for them to be here to watch over their xenos allies – the sslyth were, after all, rarely beholden to any master for long without the constant threat of punishment. But he was not looking now at the polished purple and gilt colours of the Emperor’s Children.

  Instead, the Space Marine ahead of him wore black armour with a bare steel trim. He wore a tattered cloak of scaled sslyth hide over his armour, and Gydrael glimpsed the remnants of the Imperial Aquila on one shoulder guard. The symbol had been gouged and defaced.

  ‘I have reached the target,’ voxed Thorne. ‘I’m holding position, but the sslyth are closing in. Move quickly, brothers.’

  ‘Almost there,’ replied Hasdrubal. ‘I have taken only four more damned heads. I’ll claim a third of the final tally, brothers!’

  ‘And you would be welcome to them, Storm Lord,’ said Decurius. ‘Gydrael, report in.’

  Gydrael didn’t reply.

  He was watching the Space Marine slowly turn to face him. He wore no helm, and his face was long and drawn, with greyish skin and sunken eyes. He had the appearance of both extreme age and strength, with the sallowness of a greatly extended lifespan.

  On his face was a charred handprint, running from the cheek to one temple and the edge of his half-shaven scalp. A smile spread across his face as he looked Gydrael up and down.

  Gydrael could have opened fire, but he knew the Space Marine would evade the shot and close in for the kill. Though he had never seen his opponent in the flesh, Gydrael recognised the heraldry of the enemy’s armour, and especially the mark on his face. The memory of them rose from the regimented archive of his mind, throwing his carefully ordered consciousness into d
isarray.

  ‘Well met, younger brother,’ said the Space Marine with a smile.

  Gydrael holstered his plasma pistol and drew his broadsword.

  ‘Then you’re not one for conversation,’ said the Space Marine. ‘A shame. I wait so long to see a familiar face, and they never want to speak of old times.’

  ‘Brother Gydrael,’ came Decurius’ voice over the vox. ‘Report. What is your–’

  Gydrael silenced the sergeant by cutting the channel link. Every part of him was focused on the figure before him.

  ‘Well?’ said the Space Marine. He drew his own weapon, a one-handed power sword with a long, slender blade. It was an archaic pattern that had fallen out of favour with the Chapter’s officers long ago. The air crackled and spat around it as the power field activated. ‘Are we going to do this?’

  Gydrael’s feet crunched through sslyth eggs as he charged. He didn’t care about alerting the xenos now. A greater duty bore down on him, and its weight forced his sword-arm forward to strike.

  His memories were churning. Normally ordered and obedient, now they swirled, fragments of them surfacing to break against his consciousness. One image that surfaced repeatedly, flashing in his mind even as he crossed the ground between himself his enemy, was a place of cold and dark, which had been burned into his mind...

  It had been years ago, but it felt like decades. Centuries. Gydrael had revisited that place many times to rebuild those walls within himself, the fortress that concealed the truth even while the rules and philosophies of the Deathwatch were built over the surface.

  That place was a chapel within the Rock, the fortress-monastery of the Dark Angels that floated through the void, an enormous fortified asteroid riddled with chambers and tunnel networks. The chapel was a silent place far from the surface, a shrine to the Chapter’s primarch Lion El’Jonson, large enough to contain a whole company of battle-brothers. There were only two in there now – Zameon Gydrael, and Interrogator-Chaplain Asmodai.

  Asmodai rose from his knees, where he had been lighting the incense on the altar. The black stone image of the Lion stared down, approving of their secrecy. Asmodai wore the skull-like faceplate and ivory robes of the Interrogator-Chaplains – Gydrael had never seen him without them.

  ‘Brother Gydrael,’ said Asmodai. ‘The coincidence of our meeting here is a fortunate one. There are words I would have pass between us, away from the ears of those you will soon fight alongside.’

  There had been no coincidence. Asmodai had requested Gydrael’s presence there, although his invitation, expressed in sideways and subtle language, would never have been openly acknowledged by either.

  ‘Fortunate indeed,’ he said.

  ‘When you leave for the Deathwatch,’ said Asmodai, ‘it will be many years before you return to us. Our obligations to the Inquisition require us to give you over to Ordo Xenos command completely, and there is no telling where you will be sent or for how long. This will be the last chance we have to speak directly, and without observation.’

  ‘I will stay a Dark Angel no matter what colours I wear,’ replied Gydrael.

  ‘I have no doubt of that,’ said Asmodai. ‘But I would be derelict in my duty if I did not satisfy myself that you understand what that means.’

  ‘I know the matters of which you speak,’ said Gydrael, ‘and I know my duty. The Chapter demands it of us all.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Asmodai, looking up towards the stone face of the Primarch, ‘I must hear it in as many words from you.’

  ‘I will continue the search,’ said Gydrael.

  ‘The Fallen think they can hide,’ said Asmodai. ‘Every one of them is convinced he has found the perfect nest from which to plan his treacheries. But we have found our own ways to hunt them down. The Deathwatch is one of them. You will go to places the Dark Angels will be unable to search, to places where we are not welcome. You will be thrown against the foulest of xenos and the xenophiles who consort with them, but even while you fight with all the zeal for which we are renowned, you must never forget what your duty truly is.’

  ‘I will be on the hunt until I die,’ said Gydrael. ‘And beyond, if fate wills it.’

  ‘Good,’ said Asmodai. ‘There is a reason you were chosen above all your battle-brothers when the Inquisition called on us to contribute to the Deathwatch. Your eyes are sharp and your mind is keen. That is our greatest weapon in the hunt for the Fallen. Go forth, Brother Gydrael, and bring us glory.’

  ‘I shall, my lord,’ said Gydrael, kneeling for a moment of prayer before the altar.

  ‘And brother,’ said Asmodai, as he turned to leave the chapel, ‘be sure to miss nothing.’

  The Fallen.

  No one could really understand what the Fallen were, save for a Dark Angel. They were not traitors, because traitors could be redeemed through sacrifice and made pure again in death. The Fallen could not be redeemed. Their crime was against the human race, not just against the Imperium – against the very concepts of loyalty and duty, not just against the Dark Angels.

  His Chapter would never try to explain the Fallen to anyone else. Not the other Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, not the Inquisition, not even the other members of the Deathwatch. It was a matter for the Dark Angels and their successors alone.

  Gydrael charged after the Fallen, parrying a thrust of the power sword and driving his shoulder into the enemy’s chest. The warrior pivoted and Gydrael stumbled forwards, momentarily out of control.

  The sword lashed up at him. Gydrael barely turned it aside. The impact threw him against the wall behind him and he crunched into it, fragments of resin raining down around him.

  The Fallen lunged, leading with the point of his sword. Gydrael caught the blade against the guard of his own, the swords shuddering as their power fields intersected. Gydrael led the warrior past him into the wall, and the impact took his enemy straight through the partition of sslyth secretions.

  The two Space Marines were drawn through and into the space adjoining the hatchery. It was a part of the original monastery, relatively untouched by the intrusion of the sslyth. False columns broke up the dark stone walls, and the arched ceiling was hung with cobwebs. Dust and detritus collected in the corners and the cracked paving slabs were discoloured with mould.

  Manacles hung on the walls. A rusting framework stood in the centre of the room, of a size and shape for a human to be held spread-eagled against it by the restraints hanging from its crossbars. A trio of cages, each large enough to contain a man, stood against the far wall.

  It was a chamber of punishments – or of meditation, where the monks of Phoenicus Peak had once brought themselves closer to their Emperor through pain. The Fallen steadied himself against the wall, jangling the length of rusting chain. Gydrael halted his fall by dropping to one knee, bringing the broadsword up into a solid guard.

  He felt the weight of the virus canister at his hip.

  Two duties pulled at Gydrael. His role in the mission was clear, and if he did not fulfil that role, the mission would fail. It was an easy decision for any Space Marine.

  Any except a Dark Angel. He had a greater duty, one that superseded all others. One driven by the survival of the Chapter, of the Imperium, of the human race.

  No one else would ever understand. Gydrael told himself that as he parried a speculative slash from the Fallen, circling around to put the restraining frame between himself and his foe.

  ‘I know what you are,’ said Gydrael.

  ‘Do you?’ said the Fallen. ‘Your mortal ancestors were not yet born when I learned the truth. What I have seen, you would have to dig through ten thousand years of lies to uncover. I think you know very little, younger brother.’

  ‘I am not your brother, Averamus,’ said Gydrael.

  The Fallen smiled, distorting the scar on his face. ‘So, I’m famous?’

  ‘You have the Mark of Scorn upon you,’ said Gydrael. ‘Where the Primarch laid his hand as you swore your first oaths of loyalty, there the m
ark of your treachery remains. How many times have you sought to use synthetic flesh or bionics to mask it? But it always comes back. I have learned of Averamus, and how he fled from justice. The shame of your survival besmirches us all. I will clean it away.’

  ‘I had not credited my former brethren with so rich an imagination,’ said Averamus. ‘What fascinating tales they spin.’

  ‘Do not speak of them, traitor,’ growled Gydrael, sizing up Averamus. The Fallen was an expert in his sword form, and Gydrael had never trained against it – fast, slender blades like Averamus’ were long gone from the Chapter’s armoury. He had faced foes with similar weapons and fighting styles, but never a Space Marine.

  The warrior grinned. ‘You do not know what treachery is.’

  A cut to the head would be met with a slice to the gut. Gydrael might connect, but by the time his own blade hit home he would be disembowelled, even through his armour. A thrust could be turned aside too easily and answered with a close strike inside Gydrael’s guard. The broadsword could cut right through Averamus, but the Fallen was too quick to be caught in its arc.

  ‘You serve the Emperor’s Children,’ said Gydrael. He was buying seconds, goading the Fallen into defending his existence while he searched for a way to land the killing blow. ‘Are you just the nursemaid to the sslyth? Or did you broker their subservience to the Traitor Legion? You kneel to the enemies of mankind. I need no other definition of treachery.’

  ‘You have no idea what is happening in this system,’ said Averamus. The two of them were still circling, Averamus looking for his own way in past Gydrael’s broadsword. ‘You think I am a blind follower of those deviants? I will bring down empires of the warp that your kind never even knew existed. I will send the enemies of every human screaming into the abyss. I do it from the shadows, from the very throne room of those I will destroy. You can try to stop me, little brother, but I have been on this path for thousands of years and my will is stronger than yours.’

  ‘You lie,’ said Gydrael.

  ‘Maybe I do,’ said Averamus, ‘maybe not. But you are going to die here, so you will never know.’