Dishonoured

by Ray Harrison

  ‘They do not make sense,’ he said again. Aergard had never heard Garel sound uneasy before. It unsettled him.

  ‘Garel,’ Aergard said.

  The other Space Marine finally looked at him.

  ‘Enough,’ Aergard said.

  There was a silence that stretched for several heartbeats before Garel nodded.

  ‘Which door?’ Garel asked.

  Aergard’s visor display was trying and failing to show him the distance to his marked target. The number kept changing and recalculating. He dismissed the data. It would do him no good.

  His gut was telling him to choose the first door.

  He decided to go with his gut.

  Aergard drew his combat knife and carved a cross into the stone beside the first door.

  ‘That was a guess, wasn’t it?’ Garel said.

  Aergard looked at him. ‘Only if I am wrong.’

  ‘You are a stubborn creature.’

  The Stormlord’s voice was a distant rumble, like the roll of a thunderhead. Helbrecht struggled to focus. He could hear a wan, wet thumping sound. It was drowning everything else out. He realised with unpleasant clarity that the noise was his secondary heart.

  ‘You have tried to claim this galaxy as your own for ten thousand years,’ the Stormlord continued. ‘Yet you have little of account to show for your efforts. Such failure must be as depressing to bear as it is pathetic to behold.’

  ‘You dismiss us,’ Helbrecht managed, ‘but for every drop of Imperial blood you spill, for every inch of our ground that you spoil with your presence, we will hunt you.’ He smiled through bloody teeth. ‘Until the stars themselves go dark, we will hunt you.’

  The Stormlord cocked his head to one side in an oddly human gesture.

  ‘I expect you will,’ he said. ‘But here, today, you kneel before me defeated.’ The Stormlord’s eyes flashed. ‘And I will ensure you never forget it.’

  The Stormlord took hold of Helbrecht’s right arm and severed his hand with a single stroke of his blade.

  Helbrecht bellowed in pain and anger. Blood jetted from the ruined stump of his arm, drawing patterns on the ice.

  ‘May this remind you,’ the Stormlord said, watching Helbrecht with cold curiosity, ‘of your dishonour and defeat.’

  Helbrecht glared up at his enemy.

  Not like this. He would not die like this.

  ‘I will make you pay,’ Helbrecht managed, blood frothing between his clenched teeth. He tried to get to his feet but his limbs were sluggish and weak.

  He couldn’t get up from his knees.

  The Stormlord laughed and closed his hand around Helbrecht’s throat. The Marshal felt his feet leave the ice, the Stormlord suspending him in the air.

  ‘Learn from this,’ the Stormlord said. ‘So that we may duel again.’

  Then he threw Helbrecht from the ice bridge and the Marshal fell, cursing, into the fathomless dark.

  ‘We have passed by here before.’

  Aergard stood at the edge of an unknowable abyss, a bridge of light curving downwards into the darkness. On the wall beside him was the cross he had carved into the stone as they had journeyed deeper into the structure. There had been thirteen crosses so far. It was the fifth time they had found themselves passing through locations that they had previously marked.

  To say that he was becoming frustrated would be an understatement.

  ‘How can this be?’ Garel gestured to the cross on the wall with his sword. ‘We have not climbed once. We have done nothing but follow the path downward.’

  Aergard shrugged, at a loss.

  ‘I do not think that we can apply “up and down” to this place.’

  Garel growled.

  ‘What in the hells is that supposed to mean?’

  Aergard shot him a look.

  ‘I do not know. I do not have the answers you seek. All we can do is push on. We follow Evrain’s signal until we find him. Thibaut died for this. There is no going back.’

  ‘Of course we go on,’ Garel snapped. ‘but it galls me that our brothers fight on the surface while we spend hours wandering these accursed halls.’

  Aergard frowned.

  ‘Calm yourself,’ he said. ‘It has only been sixty-eight minutes.’

  Garel froze. ‘Not according to my chronometer,’ he replied.

  It was Aergard’s turn to curse. For a brief moment, he imagined the two of them condemned to tread the obsidian halls for eternity, while outside, time spun on without them. Wars would be lost and won, and the Chapter would continue. Worst of all, they would remain dishonoured, forced to bear their shame until time showed them unwanted mercy and allowed them to die. For the first time since his elevation above the rest of humanity, Aergard experienced true despair. It would consume him, if he allowed it to.

  He chose to deny it.

  Aergard focused on his sword. The sword with which he delivered justice and fury. The sword he had sworn his oath upon. ‘Emperor protect us,’ he said, softly.

  ‘So that we might banish the darkness,’ Garel spoke the words of the prayer without hesitation, his fist held over his hearts.

  ‘And have the strength to bear His light.’

  ‘Wherever our duty may take us.’ Aergard and Garel spoke the final words together, before following the light bridge down into the abyss.

  Some time after Aergard marked his twenty-third waypoint, the two Black Templars reached the heart of the structure. It was a chamber of rust and ruin, a hoard of broken things.

  Aergard and Garel moved between pieces of disused machinery that had their innards exposed, like slaughtered animals. Cables trailed and snaked between them, connecting things that were never meant to be connected. What light there was bled from cracks in the ceiling. Tiny metallic insects scuttled everywhere.

  A noise echoed in the chamber. Aergard motioned to Garel and they circled around the husk of a mining drill.

  ‘Throne of Terra,’ Garel whispered.

  Beyond the machine graveyard, the chamber stopped being a workshop and started being a surgery.

  At the far end of the chamber, the two Space Marines could see the hunchbacked necron creature, the one that called itself Kheprys, bent over a stone slab. As it worked it mumbled in its xenos tongue. On the slab, beneath its clicking, blood-flecked claws, lay Evrain. Most of his armour had been removed, not to mention a good deal of the skin and muscle beneath. If he was not already dead, he was dying.

  On the floor beside him lay the Marshal’s standard.

  Garel snarled.

  Aergard put a hand on his shoulder. ‘We need to stop it from teleporting again,’ he said. ‘At any cost.’

  Garel nodded. ‘At any cost,’ he repeated.

  The two Space Marines burst from behind their cover, startling Kheprys.

  It retreated from its workbench, clutching butchered scraps of Evrain’s holy armour. Cables trailed, still attached to the Space Marine’s body. They pulled tight as the necron backed away, keeping it tethered.

  It blurted an irritated noise. In response, a massive mechanical creature unfolded itself from the dark spaces above them and dropped to the ground between the two Space Marines and their quarry, bladed limbs striking sparks from the stone floor. It reared on segmented legs and hissed.

  ‘Take it down,’ Aergard said.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Garel replied. He started to run, scaling the discarded machines to his right.

  The creature was surprisingly fast for something of such great size. It thundered through the scrap. Aergard saw one of its bladed limbs punch straight through a sheet of reinforced plasteel. He threw himself forwards as the creature charged towards him, rolling underneath its bulk.

  It screamed and stamped down, trying to pin him with its pointed limbs. The noise was deafening. Aergard brought his swor
d up and raked it across the creature’s underbelly. Sparks flew.

  The creature reared back, bleating. It kicked out with one of its forelimbs, catching Aergard in the chest and sending him flying across the chamber. He landed on the shell of a machine, crumpling the metal framework.

  Aergard dragged himself free, rolling onto the floor. His bolter was gone, the honour chains binding it to his armour snapped.

  He looked up, winded.

  The arachnid creature was lying in a crumpled heap, legs splayed out, still twitching. Garel stood on top of it.

  ‘Go!’ Garel managed, before plunging his sword into the back of the creature’s metal skull. It screamed and reared up, falling backwards and taking Garel with it.

  Aergard had no time to check if his brother lived. He had to stop Kheprys before it escaped.

  The hunchbacked necron had ripped the cables binding Evrain’s armour to his body from their housings. It clutched the plates to its chest, stepping back with jerking limbs, and

  laughed, a popping and hissing sound.

  ‘I bested you. You fail!’ it said, raising its staff.

  The orb at the crown of the staff began to glow. The darkness began to draw close. It was going to teleport.

  Aergard threw himself across the chamber. He had to reach it before it teleported. It could not be allowed to escape. He roared in frustration.

  The air charged with ozone.

  A hail of bolt shells struck Kheprys in the chest, stitching across its body and hitting the staff. The staff exploded with a bellow of discharging power, taking half of the necron’s face and torso with it. The displacement of air knocked Aergard backwards. He looked around, dazed.

  On the slab, Evrain was propping himself upright on one arm. Smoke curled from the muzzle of his bolter. His hand shook and his face was slackened with nerve damage.

  ‘You took your time,’ he managed, before he collapsed.

  Aergard entered the Eternal Crusader’s observation deck.

  Helbrecht was kneeling before the viewport. The stars looked on, dim and distant. At his side, an artificer was attending the new augmetic graft that replaced the hand Helbrecht had lost. Aergard could smell the caustic tang of worked metal and blood.

  He approached, waiting to be acknowledged. It had been weeks since he’d seen Helbrecht. The Marshal had secluded himself in prayer and penitence since the slaughter on Schrödinger VII. That was what some were calling it, now. The Slaughter.

  Such a grand title, for their greatest shame.

  ‘It is done, my lord,’ the artificer said, stepping back. The man bore the hint of a proud smile.

  Helbrecht stood. He curled the fingers of his new hand closed.

  ‘My thanks, Darion,’ he said.

  The artificer bowed low and retreated from the observation deck.

  Aergard dropped to one knee as Helbrecht finally turned to face him.

  ‘My lord,’ Aergard said, ‘you summoned me?’

  Helbrecht’s face gave nothing away.

  ‘Stand,’ he said.

  Aergard did as he was bade. He was relieved to see the Marshal. Helbrecht had barely survived the duel with the Stormlord. Aergard suspected that only the will of the God-Emperor had kept him going long enough for the Apothecaries to get to him.

  That, and hate. It came off the Marshal in waves.

  ‘You recovered my standard.’ Helbrecht said.

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  Helbrecht nodded. ‘Good,’ he said, after a long moment of silence.

  Aergard bowed his head. ‘Evrain did not survive,’ he said. ‘He never awoke from the healing sleep.’

  Aergard had mourned his brother. He had prayed. It still stung no less to admit that he was dead.

  Helbrecht said nothing, his expression unchanged. His augmetic fingers clicked quietly as he clenched his fist. ‘What of Schrödinger VII?’

  Aergard met the Marshal’s eyes. ‘The planet belongs to the necrons. It is lost to us,’ he said.

  Aergard remembered the human worker in the chapel. The pendant that she had pressed into Anguis’ hands. A symbol of faith.

  ‘We failed,’ he said.

  Helbrecht nodded. ‘Yes, we did,’ he said. ‘I did.’

  Aergard said nothing, surprised by the Marshal’s candour.

  ‘The sword I carried was ruined in the duel with the Stormlord. The blade shattered from point to quillion,’ Helbrecht said, looking out into the void. ‘It could not be salvaged.’ His face was drawn. Tired.

  ‘I had Darion craft this augmetic incorporating what was left of the blade,’ Helbrecht raised his fist. ‘We must all bear the weight of our failures. We will learn from this, and repent for it, but we must never forget it.’

  ‘Yes, lord.’ Aergard nodded, thinking of Thibaut’s blood on his hands.

  There would be no forgetting any of it.

  ‘I would serve at your side, still, if you would have it,’ Aergard said.

  Helbrecht nodded. ‘I would,’ he said.

  Aergard bowed his head, feeling relief despite himself.

  ‘I need my honour guard at full strength,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Garel lives?’

  Aergard nodded. They had both made it out of the necron structure, bringing Evrain with them, but not before rigging up what melta charges they carried. It would not have come close to destroying it, but even petty vengeance was better than no vengeance at all.

  ‘Good,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Think on who you would have replace those that we have lost. I would have your counsel in this.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘That will be all for now, brother,’ Helbrecht said.

  Aergard could not walk from the chamber without asking the question that plagued him most.

  ‘What of the Stormlord?’ he said.

  Helbrecht’s face was impassive. ‘When we are whole again, we will hunt it down.’ He put his closed fist to his chest. The augmetic caught the starlight, glinting.

  ‘And we will kill it.’

  About the Author

  Ray Harrison is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 short stories ‘Binding’, ‘The Third War’, ‘The Blooding’ and ‘Dishonoured’. She lives and works in Nottingham, UK.

  Grimaldus and the Black Templars lead the defence of Helsreach hive on the war-torn planet of Armageddon.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  Published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

  Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

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  ISBN: 978-1-78572-179-3

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