by Braden Campbell, Mark Clapham, Ben Counter, Chris Dows, Peter Fehervari, Steve Lyons
For Watch Sergeant Cato Thandios, teleportation is always a silent instant, Branatar reflected. His soul is untroubled by shadows.
Sometimes Branatar envied the squad leader’s uncomplicated faith. Like all warriors of the White Consuls, Thandios revered the Emperor not only as the master of Mankind, but as the living god whose destiny was absolutely manifest. Few Space Marine Chapters subscribed so completely to the Imperial Creed, but Branatar imagined there was great clarity in such conviction.
Three voices acknowledged Thandios on the squad’s vox-channel. Two belonged to proven battle-brothers, but the third was an outsider, a Techmarine newly assigned to Sabatine for this mission. Branatar frowned at the newcomer’s inflectionless tone. None who entered the Omnissiah’s service were left untouched, but this warrior – Anzahl-M636, his name was – sounded more machine than man. Branatar had met skitarii with more personality. The Techmarine’s equipment also set him aside from his squad brothers, for while they were encased in hulking Terminator plate, Anzahl-M636 had opted for lighter power armour. He had modified the suit extensively, reworking the pauldrons and breastplate into angular, geodesic shapes that venerated the Machine God. His helmet was a smooth dome split by a vertical visor that glowed with cold light. It gave him the aspect of one of the Adeptus Mechanicus’ soulless automatons.
‘Salamander?’ Thandios pressed, stirring Branatar from his brooding.
‘Acknowledged, watch sergeant,’ Branatar said as he activated his optics with a thought sigil. A rockcrete expanse resolved across his lenses, rendered in an abstraction of grey-greens. The flat surface was blemished with boulder-sized debris and deep cracks that could swallow a man. It was a miracle that the rooftop was still intact.
Looking up, Branatar made out the broken shell of the district’s dome arcing high overhead. To his trained eye the damage looked like the work of decay rather than munitions, suggesting this city hadn’t died in an honest war. It was a disquieting thought, but according to the mission briefing, Sarastus had fallen centuries ago. Its doom was surely irrelevant to his present duty.
We are here for those who came long after, Branatar knew. The briefing had been vague, but that much was certain.
‘The teleport homer is unattended,’ Anzahl-M636 said. ‘Our bridgehead has been compromised.’ There wasn’t a trace of concern in the Techmarine’s voice.
Branatar turned his gaze upon a cylindrical device squatting a few paces from the squad. The indicator on its relay panel pulsed white in his night vision. It was the only source of light on the rooftop.
‘Formation Aegis,’ Thandios commanded. ‘Kill the beacon, One-Thousand.’ It was the Watch Sergeant’s custom to name each warrior by his Chapter of origin, which occasionally resulted in some odd designations, as had happened with Anzahl-M636, who’d been dubbed ‘One-Thousand’.
The Brotherhood of A Thousand, Branatar thought. It was a strange name for a Space Marine Chapter when all Chapters aspired to such a number. To his mind it was as drab as the black ‘M’ that served as the Techmarine’s Chapter badge. Functional…
‘It’s said their brotherhood always numbers precisely one thousand,’ Icharos Malvoisin sent on a secure channel, as if reading Branatar’s mind. ‘A dismal prospect is it not, brother?’
‘An absurd one,’ Branatar replied as he turned to cover his pre-assigned watch vector. The squad fanned out around him to scan the rooftop in every direction. ‘Next you’ll believe we Salamanders can breathe fire.’
‘Oh, I never doubted it, brother. What else would account for those angry red eyes of yours?’
‘Watching your damned back, simpleton.’
Despite his rebuke, Branatar counted the Angel Resplendent as a friend. Cato Thandios and Sevastin, the Black Wing, were trusted allies, but outside the field of battle they were strangers to him. His camaraderie with Malvoisin had been unexpected, not least because the man’s humour had rankled him when they’d first met. In truth, Branatar had wondered how such a frivolous warrior had earned a place in the Deathwatch, but he’d found his answer on their first mission together: there was nothing frivolous about Icharos Malvoisin.
‘Status report, One-Thousand?’ Thandios asked.
‘The teleport homer has functioned at ninety-seven-point-three per cent efficiency,’ Anzahl-M636 replied. ‘Our spatial misalignment was within acceptable parameters.’
The Techmarine had extruded a serpentine mechadendrite from his gauntlet, connecting him to the device that their ship’s teleporter had used to triangulate their deployment. Without a homer, the squad might have materialised inside a solid wall or high above the planet’s surface. Neither prospect was conducive to survival, so homers were vital, but they had to be placed manually – so where was their contact on the ground?
‘Has it been tampered with?’ Thandios demanded, obviously sharing Branatar’s unease.
‘Improbable,’ Anzahl-M636 said, deactivating the homer. ‘The–’
‘Multiple contacts incoming,’ Sevastin cut across the Techmarine. If paranoia was a virtue in war then the Black Wing was a saint of battle, for he was always the first to see a threat, if indeed it was sight that gave him his edge.
The creatures swarmed from the cracks in the roof like locusts, hauling themselves out with gangling arms and grasping, almost prehensile feet. They were naked and hairless, their pallid flesh stretched taut across skeletons that were no longer quite human, with misaligned joints and backswept skulls that frayed and tapered to thorny points. Their eyes were like shrivelled white mushrooms, sunken behind distended snouts that sniffed at the air as they skittered towards the squad, loping and leaping, sometimes on their feet, but just as often on all fours. Yet despite their bestial aspect, they charged in utter silence, save for the scrabbling of their talons across the ground.
Somehow, that was the most inhuman thing of all.
Mutants, Branatar thought with weary revulsion. He had seen such perversions of humanity before, though never as far gone as these degenerates. It will be a mercy to cleanse these vermin.
‘Hold fire,’ Thandios ordered, ‘melee weapons only. Keep it quick and quiet.’
The warp turbulence that had heralded the squad’s arrival had lasted scant seconds. If fortune went their way the true enemy hadn’t registered it, but sustained gunfire would be pressing their luck.
‘Divided we endure,’ Sevastin hissed, as he did before every battle, even the least. Branatar assumed it was his Chapter’s credo, but if so it was a dark one. He’d fought alongside the Black Wing for years, yet he knew nothing about the reclusive warrior’s past.
He is another who entered the Deathwatch seeking absolution, Branatar guessed. Absolution, or oblivion…
He tilted his flamer up so it wouldn’t be sullied by unclean blood and raised his left hand. It was empty, yet the massive gauntlet was a weapon in its own right. There was a flare of light beside him as Malvoisin’s power sword surged into life. Like Branatar, he had customised his personal weapon, encasing the hilt in a chiaroscuro fretwork of silver and obsidian that sang when he swung the blade. The Angels Resplendent were artists without parallel among the Adeptus Astartes and Malvoisin was among their finest.
‘Veritas vos viribus!’ Thandios intoned in High Gothic as the mutants broke against the Deathwatch like a tide against an immovable rock. Claws and jaws scraped and snapped against hard ceramite, unable to penetrate or find purchase, while flailing fists battered themselves into bloody oblivion. The squad answered without mercy, culling the vermin in swathes.
Branatar swung about with his fist, crushing skulls or punching through chests with equal ease. The ghouls were so fragile he barely felt them die. It was like extinguishing phantoms…
‘This is no work for a Firedrake,’ Athondar echoed his sentiment.
Branatar cast the unwelcome memory aside and focussed on the battle at hand, though this slaughter hardly warranted the term. Given time he could put down every one of these degenerates on his
own.
Beside him, Malvoisin whirled his blade about in wide, rippling arcs that cleaved through two or three mutants with every pass. Tactically he was in his element here, but Branatar knew that he took no joy in such crude work.
Icharos will sketch this scene over and over when we are done with this world, he predicted grimly. Whatever foe we face later, this is the one he will remember.
Watch Sergeant Thandios was intoning a steady stream of canticles as he fought. Like his faith, the White Consul’s fighting style was resolute and controlled: he swung his power fist with piston-like regularity, marking every kill with a word of castigation.
In contrast, the Black Wing tore into the mutants with a whirling abandon that strained against his bulky armour. His single lightning claw spiralled through the pack, slicing his foes into ragged fragments that spattered and sometimes stuck to his carapace. Thandios had frowned on Sevastin’s choice of a single claw because the Codex Astartes decreed that two was the optimal configuration, but the Black Wing’s choice hadn’t hindered his lethality.
‘This mutant strain appears stable,’ Anzahl-M636 observed, ‘but it exceeds prescribed Imperial limits for genetic drift. I will recommend a full purgation commission following mission termination.’
Branatar glanced at the Techmarine. The newcomer stood rigid with his arms folded while the multi-jointed servo arm attached to his back whirred about with a life of its own, striking down mutants like a metal cobra. Its clawed head had extruded twin rows of rotary blades that shredded everything they touched.
There was a snarl of disgust from Malvoisin. Branatar turned and saw a ghoul perched on his friend’s back, its matchstick legs wrapped around his helmet as it scratched at the lenses. The wretched creature must have vaulted from the shoulders of its kin to gain such a height. His vision impaired, the swordsman swung about trying to shake it off while keeping the others at bay. He was in no danger, but the sheer indignity of it appeared to enrage him. With a flourish he spun his sword round and lanced it up through the beast. Its carcass ignited and came apart around the energy-swathed blade, but another mutant leapt forwards and wrapped itself around his right leg. Malvoisin stamped furiously, crushing one of the beast’s trailing limbs and sending tremors through the rooftop.
‘Caution,’ Anzahl-M636 said flatly, ‘this structure is unsound.’
The Techmarine was moving now, ploughing through the mob to put distance between him and the raging Angel Resplendent.
‘Icharos–’ Branatar began as Malvoisin kicked out and dislodged the ghoul from his leg. Before the Salamander could finish, the swordsman brought his blade down in a vertical swipe that cleaved the mutant in two and bit deep into the ground. With a roar of fury he hacked again and again, pulverising the creature into ragged red shards and sundering the ground beneath.
‘Angel!’ Thandios bellowed.
A lattice of fissures zigzagged out from the riven rockcrete, widening as they extended. A moment later, the ground under the Angel Resplendent heaved apart and he found himself straddling a chasm. With a grace that belied his armoured bulk, Malvoisin spun to his right and brought both feet down on solid ground.
‘That was foolish,’ he said to Branatar. A shallower warrior would have said it with a grin, but there was only shame in Malvoisin’s voice.
No, not shame, Branatar realised through his relief. Despair.
‘I–’
Malvoisin’s words were snatched away as the ground disintegrated under him and he plummeted from sight, leaving behind a ragged hole. A tremor ran through the rooftop and another great slab tumbled through, widening the pit and sucking in a trio of wildly scrabbling ghouls.
‘Structural disintegration imminent,’ Anzahl-M636 evaluated.
The slab under Branatar tilted towards the rift as he backed away. He saw that the Techmarine had reached the stairwell at the roof’s edge, but the rest of his comrades were caught in the collapse. Thandios was leaning forwards as he tried to navigate a path through the farrago, while Sevastin balanced precariously on a swaying slab.
They won’t make it, Branatar gauged. And neither will I.
‘Kill Team Sabatine,’ the Techmarine instructed, ‘initiate armour salvation systems. Proceed to ground level, if you endure.’
‘He’s right!’ Branatar voxed. ‘It’s the only way, brothers!’
As he was pitched towards the rift, he cradled his weapon and triggered his armour’s lockdown mode. The muscle fibre bundles lining the suit’s interior expanded, sheathing his body tightly as he plunged into the darkness alongside a pair of flailing, but still silent ghouls.
Ten feet… twenty… thirty…
He hit the floor of the level below like a wrecking ball and punched straight through to the next. He’d come down feet first thanks to his suit’s gyro stabilisers and the impact sent shockwaves up his legs and spine.
‘…dum spiro spero…’ Branatar heard Thandios praying over the vox, then the thread snapped as he crashed through to another level. Then another.
This would be an inglorious way to die, he reflected.
‘Unworthy of a son of Vulkan,’ Athondar agreed from the deeper pit that had claimed Branatar on Gharuda. The agony in his voice was undiminished.
‘Forgive me, brother,’ Branatar said. Then the ground surged up like an iron wave to crush him against the anvil of his guilt, and–
Branatar howled as he saw Athondar fall, his friend’s legs sheared away from the knees down by an unclean xenos projectile. With a shriek of tortured gravity, the eldar raider that had felled him swept past overhead, lancing more of the Imperium’s avengers with black light.
‘Go! Finish it!’ Athondar yelled, hauling himself against a wall by the strength of his arms alone. ‘I shall hold the road, brother.’
Branatar willed himself to remain beside his wounded friend. This time the xenos wouldn’t overrun Athondar and flay him alive. This time he would change it.
But already the irresistible, irrevocable hand of the past was sweeping him on – on towards the basilica where the corrupt Gharudan elders cowered.
They were his primary kill targets. His duty.
And Branatar understood that the nightmare would run its course exactly as it had done the first time and every time after. Except this time Athondar was laughing at him as he turned his back, mocking him with a voice that wasn’t his own.
‘Garran!’
Snarling like a trapped animal, Branatar fought back, straining his muscles against the vicelike grip of history – tainted history – but it held him rigid as the voice of fate taunted him…
‘Disable lockdown, Garran!’
Branatar blinked, recognising the voice and obeying instinctively.
‘Icharos?’ he asked.
‘So they tell me,’ Malvoisin answered without a trace of humour.
‘It gladdens me to see you, brother.’ Branatar breathed deeply and flexed his arms as the tension in his armour eased up. His fall had been broken by the corroded relic of some ancient machine and he was wedged waist deep in its housing. By Vulkan’s grace his flamer was intact save for superficial dents.
‘How long was I out, Icharos?’
‘We’ve been on this world less than twenty minutes,’ Malvoisin said. ‘You and I landed in the same chamber.’
The Salamander snorted. This wasn’t an entrance they’d regale their battle-brothers with when they returned to their Chapters. ‘What of the others?’ he asked. His suit’s augur was playing up and he couldn’t get a lock on the comrade standing a few paces away, let alone the rest of the squad.
‘Sevastin is two floors below us.’ Malvoisin paused to consult his own sensors. ‘The Techmarine is six floors above.’
‘He’s taken the long way down,’ Branatar said sourly as he began to yank at the wreckage encasing his legs. ‘What of the Cardinal?’
Malvoisin had coined Thandios’ nickname, but now his friend received it with stony silence. Branatar halted his efforts
to free himself.
‘Where is the watch sergeant, Icharos?’
Malvoisin made no answer.
‘Icharos!’
‘He was still falling when I lost his signal,’ the warrior said quietly.
They descended through the crumbling, shadow-choked corridors of the hab-block in silence. Malvoisin had fallen into a brooding reverie that Branatar made no attempt to dispel. If Cato Thandios was lost then the burden lay squarely with the Angel Resplendent.
Still falling? Branatar wondered. How was that possible? Even if nothing had broken Thandios’ passage along the way, the building surely couldn’t extend more than a few thousand feet below ground level. He couldn’t still be falling…
‘You are wrong, brother,’ Athondar whispered to him. ‘A man can fall forever, on a fallen world.’
They found Sevastin waiting in a cavernous atrium on the ground level. The Black Wing stood by the lip of a jagged wound in the marble floor. He turned as they approached and indicated the rift.
‘The Watch Sergeant is gone,’ he said without emotion.
Branatar peered into the chasm and frowned. Beyond the first few feet, the rift was an impenetrable void. His instincts told him that Thandios’ impact hadn’t carved that unnatural pit. No, it had been there since darkness swallowed this world.
Waiting for Thandios?
‘You can’t be certain,’ Branatar said gruffly, unsure whether he was arguing with Sevastin or himself. ‘Did you see him fall in?’
‘I saw nothing,’ Sevastin said, ‘yet I know it.’ He hesitated. ‘My Chapter is familiar with the traps that riddle the darkness between the stars.’
‘We will return for the Watch Sergeant after the mission is complete,’ Branatar said with a conviction he didn’t feel. He turned his back on the pit and surveyed the atrium. It was littered with debris, like every chamber they’d passed through, but here there was a surreal twist: the fragments of a gargantuan statue were scattered about, transforming the place into a tomb for a stone giant.
