by Braden Campbell, Mark Clapham, Ben Counter, Chris Dows, Peter Fehervari, Steve Lyons
To the Ordo Xenos of the Inquisition of Mankind, they were bait that had finally drawn their target in.
Cassius looked towards the members of his team.
Stentor Pranus, Novamarine. An expert in fighting the eldar.
Skarr-Hedin, Space Wolf. A new recruit. One of the fiercest fighters he knew.
The third, Ennox Sorrlock, Iron Hand. A fearsome logic engine.
He had handpicked each warrior. They were the best at what they did. He was going to need them – Vael Donatus, his Chapter brother and favoured kill team leader, was on a posting to the Hurn Wastes. Cassius closed his eyes, and focused on his fury.
As they entered the outer atmosphere, the air within the gunship began to heat up. Cassius breathed deeply. He could feel Sorrlock’s augmetic eyes watching him.
‘Sorrlock?’ he called across the hold.
Sorrlock made no response. The Storm Eagle rattled as it hit the lower atmosphere.
‘You’re thinking,’ Cassius said.
Sorrlock’s metallic voice came back. ‘I am always thinking.’
‘So, tell me what is going through your mind now.’
‘I am reviewing our mission, Brother-Chaplain. Deathwatch kill team specified target: the eldar listed in Ordo Xenos archive Sentinel-Four-Four-Three as Archon 2296-46a. Commonly known as Archon Tehmaq, killer of twelve worlds, first noted in Imperial records in the Opal Sector. Responsible for the Scouring of Lijan, shrine world. Estimated losses of two billion. Ninety-eight per cent losses in the Cadian 1076th, including General Plume and all support staff, Lord Commissar Tranz von Gunten, and Inquisitor…’
Cassius let Sorrlock go through his data files. Sorrlock found facts comforting in a way that became almost painful. He knew the Iron Hand would list each atrocity that the archon had committed.
He let the details sink in, let them stoke his own righteous ire.
No one possessed a fury like he did. He could control and hone it, using it as a weapon of war in itself. It was a black fire within him, a geyser of rage at the traitor, the heretic, the xenos.
He breathed the fury out. His eyes blinked open suddenly as he sucked his anger back through flared nostrils. It filled him.
‘The Black Spider will be there,’ Cassius interrupted.
There was a moment’s silence. It was unusual in Sorrlock.
‘The Black Spider,’ he said. ‘Common Imperial designation for haemonculus of the Dark Coven. Haemonculus listed in Ordo Xenos Archive Sentinel-Four-Four-Nine as Haemonculus 862-CW-5. Responsible for–’
‘Responsible for the loss of seven members of Iron Hands Squad Morag, Clan Kaargul.’
There was another pause.
Cassius watched him. ‘Your own squad, Ennox Sorrlock.’
Sorrlock said nothing as the Storm Eagle’s rapid descent levelled out. They were flying low to the ground now, to avoid detection.
‘How do you know this?’ Sorrlock said at last.
‘You fought well. You brought death to the xenos. They were stacked three deep about you.’
‘I brought death to my brothers.’
‘We all die,’ Cassius said.
‘Machines do not,’ Sorrlock said.
Cassius sighed. ‘Today is your chance for vengeance, brother.’
‘Negative. Today our mission is to kill Archon Tehmaq.’
Cassius stared at him, but it was Pranus, the Novamarine, who spoke. ‘The Black Spider. He did... all this to you?’
Sorrlock’s metal head turned to the fair-haired warrior next to him. ‘Affirmative.’
‘If he did this to me then I would tear his arms from his body!’ Skarr-Hedin said. ‘The galaxy seldom gives you a chance for revenge like this, Sorrlock. Do you not savour it?’ The Space Wolf’s fangs appeared as he snarled. ‘I can almost taste it. I would rip out his heart.’
Sorrlock slowly faced each of them in turn. The movement had the odd air of a practised behaviour, as if he had no interest in the gesture, but had learnt it was expected. At the end he appeared unmoved.
‘Negative. We should all remember. Our mission is to kill Archon Tehmaq. The Black Spider is not our target.’
There was a long pause.
‘Query – what does vengeance taste like?’ Sorrlock asked.
The Space Wolf grinned, his yellow eyes as inhuman as Sorrlock’s. ‘Hot blood. It tastes like battle joy. It tastes like laughter. It is like a Great Company charging in fury. It is the roar of battle in the emptiness of the void, when the boarding torpedoes launch.’
Sorrlock watched without reaction, or even interest. ‘We are approaching the target,’ he said.
At the same time a red light began to flash. ‘Approaching target,’ the servitor vox-system announced. ‘Contact in ten, nine…’
‘Brothers,’ Cassius rumbled. ‘Join with me.’
Together they uttered the Litany of Hatred. They were just speaking the last lines as the servitor reported again. ‘Contact.’
The Storm Eagle landed, bracing harnesses released.
Chaplain Cassius was first out, Kill Team Torrent right behind him.
V
Sorrlock remembered.
He remembered human pain. Human frailties. The enemies of the flesh.
He remembered having a human body again. Running, flexing, twisting, laughing. He remembered the fury of being weak and trapped. He remembered the last moments of his charge, cutting down one, two, four of the foe. He got so close to the Black Spider he could see the back of its throat as it opened its mouth in a roar of hate. There were words there, though Sorrlock did not care for them.
He bludgeoned one of its guards with his bolter’s stock, punched the other, took aim... but had fired too slowly.
‘Brothers,’ Grimmack’s voice haunted his dreams. It summoned the ghosts of his Iron Hands back to him. They stood in a circle about him, his dead brothers, in full battle dress, their red lenses staring accusingly at him from beyond the grave.
‘You failed us, Sorrlock,’ their faces said. ‘Your flesh was weak.’
VI
The low clouds of Shenden Port hid the tops of the buildings in the warehouse district. Between the vast structures were dark canyons, thick with derricks and gantries and ancient, rusting chains. Water dripped in a continuous stream. Sorrlock had plans of the planet and the city stored within his memory coils. He led them towards their destination, taking care to avoid detection from the hunting xenos.
‘Canyon fifty-six,’ he said. ‘This is it.’
Cassius nodded.
‘Target structure lies north of here,’ Sorrlock voxed. ‘Five minutes at current speed.’
Something darted into the canyon a hundred yards from where they stood. Cassius saw a half-starved human, barefoot, in ragged clothes, with what looked like a hatchet in its belt. It kept low, moving furtively, looking over its shoulder, clearly frightened.
Sorrlock’s brain worked in data. ‘Male,’ he said. ‘Approximate age, thirty-four. Life expectancy, plus six years. Threat, negligible.’
A flock of sharp shadows plunged down on the man like striking eagles. There was a hum of air, a scream, and then they were gone, wild shapes veering maniacally down the street.
‘Eldar reavers. Threat: extreme.’
The human lay in a widening pool of his own blood, moaning in agony.
Skarr-Hedin let out a low growl but Cassius touched his shoulder. ‘I hear your fury, brother.’
Sorrlock ignored them both. ‘Precision wounds have left the spine untouched. Human experiencing extreme pain levels,’ he noted. ‘Revised life expectancy, plus thirty seconds. Reavers bear the kill-markings of Archon Tehmaq’s coven. Target is likely to be close. Follow me, brothers.’
Ten minutes later, Sorrlock held up a hand at the base of a vast rockcrete warehouse.
‘This is it,’ he intoned.
Cassius led Kill Team Torrent forward. The corrugated metal doors hung open on broken hinges.
Sorrlock noted the details.
‘It appears most of the warehouses in this area dealt with the shipment and processing of foodstuffs – animal carcasses and organic residues such as dried sorghum stalks, compressed fava oil, gantha root gum...’
He paused in the doorway, taking a moment to scan the room.
‘All clear.’
Kill Team Torrent moved slowly up through the empty warehouse floors. The refrigeration units had long since shut down. A vast square container had blown open and slabs of grox flank rotted inside. It was covered in thick blue algae.
The stink was acrid, but the Space Marines could still detect the scent of fresh blood.
Sorrlock halted at the open doors of a conveyor shaft. The bottom was piled deep with rotting bodies. Skinned, headless – human.
‘Why would they do this?’ Skarr-Hedin growled.
‘It is what they are like,’ Pranus replied. ‘They take pleasure in pain. They feed on fear.’
‘Will they be waiting for us?’
‘Negative,’ said Sorrlock. ‘Guards will most likely be flesh-constructs. They will be defending the warp gate. The eldar will most likely be indulging their sadistic temperaments.’
Skarr-Hedin nodded and hefted his heavy bolter. ‘Let us continue, brothers.’
Sorrlock led them across an empty refrigeration unit to another conveyor. The iron cabling that supported the cage had rusted through but there was an inner ladder within the shaft that was still firm.
‘Sorrlock, take the lead,’ Cassius ordered.
The Iron Hand nodded and started to climb. The lift shaft rose through a series of storage floors filled with empty silos and granaries. The shaft ended twenty-five floors up, opening out into a large counting room. Wooden chairs lay overturned along a long central table. The walls were hung with peeling pictures of the colony’s founding fathers. They looked out with short beards and solemn faces, hands resting on the various implements of their trade.
Sorrlock raised his combi-weapon.
‘Flesh-construct,’ he voxed. ‘Close-combat unit, serrated blade-arms. Danger: significant. Life expectancy: zero.’
As he spoke the last words, his combi-melta’s bolter bucked.
The muffled report of the shot rang out. The construct fell. The entry hole was a neat round puncture through the metal visor, the back of its head a fleshy ruin.
‘Left eyeball,’ Skarr-Hedin murmured as they stood over the body. ‘Good shot.’
‘We have entered the sentry zone,’ Sorrlock intoned.
‘Then we must be coming close to the warp gate,’ Pranus said.
‘Affirmative.’
Sorrlock led them up a rusty file of wide steps through a doorway into a ramshackle clerk’s chamber. Scraps of human flesh hung from walls, with hooks, chains, manacles and fresh dripping skins swinging gently in the breeze from the lower levels. He put another shot through the skull of a second sentry construct, then led the kill team inside.
They were moving faster now. The xenos warp gate had to be close.
Sorrlock dispatched another sentry standing at the end of the next corridor. It slid backwards down the wall, leaving a long dark stain. At the same time an alarm rang out. It was something between a scream and a siren.
‘We have been detected,’ Cassius cursed. ‘Move quickly!’
VII
‘There is no other way.’
Ennox Sorrlock drifted in and out of consciousness. He was being devoured by the green slime. His flesh was steaming. His bones were dissolving. He burned from the inside.
He arched his back, and raised his hand to try to fire his boltgun, but he wasn’t holding it anymore. He was lying on an apothecarion gurney. A face bent over him. He tried to bat it away before recognition came to him. It was not an enemy.
‘Brother. There is not much time. You will need all your strength. There will be pain.’
Sorrlock braced himself.
‘Insert probes,’ the voice came again.
Ennox Sorrlock’s teeth ground together as the barbed neural implants seared into the soft grey matter of his brain. His fingers clenched. His body heaved against the restraints. A low tortured moan escaped through his snarling teeth.
There were hot wires in the meat of his mind. The agony was unbearable.
The voice said, ‘Turn it on.’
Sorrlock braced...
...but this time there was no pain. Or rather, the pain was distant as a shouting man, who falls far behind and is soon forgotten.
Pain and emotion existed on the other side of an unbreakable screen in his mind. He could see them. Recognise them. But he no longer felt them. There was only a sense of expansion, of elevation, of elation.
His mind spiralled in exacting multi-functional lines of thought and logic. It revelled in the speed of his precision thinking. He calculated the chances of his survival. The rate of healing. The probability of his return to active service within the month. The chances of a bolt shell hitting a Medusan auroch at half a mile.
The voice summoned him back. ‘Ennox.’
He opened his one remaining eye. His sight was blurry and indistinct.
His three augmetic eyes did not need to open. They focused on the face above him.
Iron Father Stovek. Space Marine. Iron Hands Chapter. Age, two hundred and fifty-seven years. Seventy-four per cent augmetic. Life expectancy (organics), in excess of five hundred years, assuming no further enhancement or combat damage.
‘Brother Sorrlock,’ Stovek spoke. ‘You have been blessed.’
‘Thank you, Iron Father,’ a mechanical voice said in response, and the voice was his own.
Sorrlock sat up with a hiss of pistons. He looked down. His body was metal and wires.
‘Over eighty-three per cent augmetic,’ Iron Father Stovek said.
‘Yes,’ Sorrlock said, as he analysed his own body. There was a whine of motorised parts as he looked up. ‘Eighty-three-point-seven...’
‘You were a great warrior, Ennox Sorrlock,’ he said. ‘But your flesh was weak.’
‘I led my brothers to their deaths.’
The Iron Father nodded. ‘I have seen the pict-feeds. You let pride drive you. But you fought well. Better than any I have seen. We have elevated you. Machine and human, melded as one. You are a true Iron Hand now. The finest we can build. Take your shame and hone it to a fine blade. You will fight for the machine. You will fight for the Imperium. You will kill in the name of the Emperor.’
‘Yes, Iron Father.’
Sorrlock stood. He took two steps. He moved his left arm, his right arm, flexed his metal fingers.
‘I am truly an Iron Hand now.’ His metallic monotone had no trace of humour. As his augmetic eyes looked about him, his mechanical cortex scrolled with data and targeting relays.
The flesh was weak, it reasoned.
The machine was perfect.
VIII
From all across the warehouse, xenos flesh-constructs came for them. They were mindless things, but they were not slow or stupid. They followed their master’s commands, and their commands were to stop the intruders.
Sorrlock kept the kill team moving, his memory coils continually analysing modes of attack, possible routes to the rooftop, proposed opposition.
As Pranus killed the last constructs in the stairwell behind them, Sorrlock ran to the top and kicked the gantry door open. There was a long, half-lit rockcrete corridor behind it. He did not pause but kept moving, his combi-weapon bucking as each red target lock blinked out. Cassius was right behind him. Pranus was catching up, Skarr-Hedin firing his heavy bolter in support.
As he rounded the end of the corridor, Sorrlock punched his melta barrel into the mouth of the thing that jumped at him, and seared off its head.
Sorrlock’s augmetic hand caught the creature’s claw. It dripped hissing yellow venom. He snapped the hand free and slammed it into the chest of another flesh-construct. It fell back, heels drumming on the ground as the toxins boiled within it.
Skarr-Hedin filled the c
orridor with heavy bolter shells, throwing the xenos things back. Behind them stood their flesh-master: an eldar degenerate, human-skin cloak flapping about her.
Skarr-Hedin kept firing. More shells smashed holes in the rockcrete walls where she had been standing.
Sorrlock fired his bolter three times. Two of the rounds hit the eldar in the back and tore her slender shape to shreds.
‘On your left!’ Cassius hissed as they hit the top of the stairs.
Pranus’ bolter was on semi-automatic. The muzzle flare cast a ruddy light on his close-shaven face as he hosed the antechamber. The Space Wolf was right behind him, howling in hatred until the fighting was too close for his heavy bolter and he was forced to draw his combat knife and fight them hand-to-hand instead. He broke a thin eldar warrior backwards over his knee. He struck another in the face, his genhanced senses picking up the distinctive sound of shattering nose bones being driven into brain, then swung around looking for the next kill.
The others were already running towards another flight of wide rockcrete stairs.
‘Do not be distracted,’ Sorrlock said flatly over the vox. ‘Our time is running short.’
More and more siren alarms sounded, calling the eldar from across the city back to the safety of their warp portal.
Now Sorrlock took the stairs four at a time. The stairwell wound up, doubling back over itself at plain rockcrete landings fifty steps apart. As he approached the third landing he tossed a frag grenade up onto the stairwell, timing the explosion to the millisecond, and reached the landing as the last fragments of shrapnel flew by.
His augmetic eyes were running at combat speed. It had the effect of expanding time – the pulling of a trigger seemed almost a minute long. The cyber-optic connections within his brain moved at a speed that not even the eldar could counter. He targeted and fired, the combi-weapon kicking slowly in his hand as each bolter shell exited the barrel. He watched as the rocket accelerant fired in a fierce explosion of yellow flame, his mind calculating the trajectory of each round, the movement vectors of each target, the percentage hit probability, how many more shots it would take to achieve the ninety-nine per cent death/maimed/inoperative threshold he had learned to trust. At this speed, his arm seemed lazily ponderous. He had seven bolt shells in the air at one time. Each one was aimed at a different target. He watched each one strike home, confirming the hit.
