Watchers in Death

by David Annandale

  ‘Good. The Emperor protects.’

  ‘The Emperor protects.’

  In the fourth minute, brutish voices sounded closer in the far left passageway. Thane held up an arm, waiting a few seconds more. The noises came closer. The other paths were silent. Warfist was right – Straton’s surmise was barely more than a guess. But the direction of the tunnel was correct, and there was little else to go on.

  The bobbing glow of portable lamps appeared in the tunnel.

  Thane lowered his arm.

  Warfist shot forward, fists tight, arms extended, lightning claws at the ready. Thane and Straton followed, each with gladius drawn. The kills had to be silent. Forcas and Abathar brought up the rear.

  Warfist rounded a curve in the tunnel. The voices became snarls of alarm. As Thane reached the curve, a shout was cut off, turning into a wet gurgle. He heard a sound like heavy bags of meat slapping against rock.

  He made the turn. Warfist was in the centre of a group of about a dozen orks. Two lay dead. He had plunged into the centre of the greenskins and was fighting the largest. It was taller than Warfist, its head brushing against the roof of the tunnel. A huge wound gaped in its throat and its jaws were wide in near-silent, choking fury. It swung a massive hammer at the Space Wolf. Warfist jabbed with his left claws, sinking them deep into the greenskin’s arm at the elbow. He twisted. The greenskin’s hand opened, nerveless, and the hammer fell to the tunnel floor. A second later, so did the ork’s lower arm.

  The other orks charged the kill-team. Thane pulled back his blade, then struck forward with servo-aided force. The gladius stabbed all the way through his target’s throat and out of the back of its neck. Thane slashed sideways. The ork’s head, half-severed, lolled back. Blood geysered; the body fell. Thane leapt over it and grasped another ork by the face. The beast jerked back in surprise and Thane yanked it forward. The greenskin chopped futilely at his armour with a heavy cleaver before Thane rammed the gladius into its chest. He angled the blow upward, drove the blade higher, cutting through gut and heart.

  Beside him, Straton took down two more orks in swift, cold, precise strikes. A handful of others were still rushing forward. They were snarling in rage, and in their fury they were not shouting in alarm. Anger was the norm among orks. Even if those snarls reached others, they would not pay attention as they would to a summons.

  Abathar’s plasma cutter burned through a pair of skulls. Warfist gutted the giant and turned back to impale the last of the attacking greenskins through the spine. That left the smaller, scuttling creatures. Their squeals were drowned out by the snarls of their masters. They fled, scrambling over the corpse of the monster, fast in their panic. Just a few metres ahead, Thane saw what looked like burrows in the stone. If the tiny xenos reached those holes, they would be impossible to follow. He reached for his boltgun, willing to risk the noise of concussion blasts.

  Forcas stepped forward, right hand outstretched, energy crackling from his psychic hood and down his arm. Lightning flashed from his fingertips and struck the vermin, searing them to ash. There was a sharp crack of thunder. The smell of burned ozone filled the tunnel. The air rippled with the after-effects of dissipating warp power. Warfist’s wolf-headed helm turned from the smoking remains of the creatures towards Forcas. If he was disgusted by the Blood Angel’s sorcery, he refrained from saying so.

  ‘We have gained some time,’ Straton said. ‘But we have little to spare.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Thane.

  They moved quickly down the corridor. The pounding of machines and the violent discharge of energy grew louder, covering the sound of their boots as they ran. The tunnel twisted, then came to a stop.

  It opened into a huge cavern. From this position, Thane could see only a small portion of its upper reaches. Ahead was a rough metal ramp leading up to what appeared to be a massive promontory that jutted out into the space of the cavern. At the top of the promontory was a roofless structure. The tops of its walls were angular, as if it were a jagged iron crown and energy coils rose from the corners, leaning out over the void. Innumerable cables ran from the base of the structure and into the air below the promontory, or down its slope into other tunnels opening up on the wall along its base. Some were as thick as Land Raiders. Searing light flashed from inside the structure. Energy arced and snapped from the coils, and the booms of the discharges were deafening.

  In the gaps in the walls, figures moved back and forth, silhouetted by the pulsing light within. They were large. Their forms were strange, built up with something artificial that had the wrong shape for armour.

  There was activity up and down the ramp as hordes of the tiny greenskins hauled wagons of equipment up, and burned-out debris back down. The creatures were urged to greater efforts by orks wielding shock prods.

  ‘A clear run to the top,’ Warfist said over the vox.

  Thane eyed the traffic on the ramp and agreed. These orks were not a serious obstacle. ‘The alarm will be raised,’ he warned. ‘Our time will be limited.’

  ‘What time we have will depend on Squad Crozius,’ said Straton.

  ‘The timing of all three squads is critical,’ Forcas said. ‘We must have faith in them, and they in us.’

  ‘For Terra and the Emperor, then,’ said Thane. ‘For the Deathwatch!’

  ‘For the Deathwatch!’ the squad shouted, voices amplified by vox-casters.

  Warriors in black stormed out of the tunnel and up the ramp, into the rising shriek of orks.

  ‘Ingenious,’ said the Blood Angels Techmarine Gadreel. ‘Despite the damage the Last Wall inflicted, the orks have managed to amplify the power of what remained.’

  ‘I have had more than enough of their ingenuity,’ said Iairos.

  The Ultramarines sergeant had led Squad Crozius to a small tunnel that ended three metres up from the floor of the gate chamber. Based on the reports of the first engagement, a large portion of the cavern must have fallen in. It was still well over a kilometre wide, but to the right of the kill-team’s position was a massive collapse. It looked as if a mountain had fallen on the machinery that powered the gate.

  Where there had been three Titan-sized horns, now there was only one, a monstrous patchwork that appeared to have been assembled from the wreckage of the previous three. Its balance was precarious, its upper half thicker than the lower, and its peak was a colossal, trifurcated claw. Countless support chains now ran from the horn to the walls and slope of rubble. The horn trembled and vibrated from the energies fed to it and summoned by it. Eldritch light exploded and imploded in the centre of the claw. Every time the burning force collapsed in on itself, there was a cave-filling flash on the platform at its base, and another war party of orks appeared.

  ‘There is our primary target,’ said Gadreel. He pointed.

  To the left of the tunnel, an enormous power cable six metres thick entered the cavern. A short way to the right, it split into myriad smaller cables, running power to the hulking machines that, in turn, provided energy and direction to the functioning of the gate.

  ‘They are vulnerable,’ said Valtar Skyclaw. The Space Wolf Rune Priest looked up at the horn. ‘The unclean energies here are on the cusp of overwhelming their material constraints. We will destroy this gate forever.’

  ‘Not until we claim its power source,’ Gadreel said.

  ‘Aye,’ Skyclaw admitted.

  ‘Where is Gladius?’ the Dark Angel Vehuel asked.

  ‘Nearly in position,’ Iairos said. Until the power was shut off temporarily, they could not attempt to splice into the main cable and link it to Gadreel’s teleport homer.

  ‘How long will it take to cut into that?’ asked Eligos, the second Blood Angel.

  ‘Not long,’ said Gadreel.

  ‘Attacking control centre,’ Thane called over the vox. ‘Stand by. Stand by.’

  Time accelerated and slowed at once. With
Thane’s call, the mission entered the narrow window of success. The timing of the actions required from all three squads came down to a matter of seconds. Sword and Crozius could not take their targets until the power flow was under the control of Gladius. Thane’s squad would not be able to hold their position if Crozius did not stop the reinforcements from arriving. Crozius could not risk destroying the gate without also destroying its teleport homer.

  The allotment of seconds crawled as Iairos took in the variables of the battlefield. He saw the vectors of action and their possible consequences. He waited, forced to guess at the moment and duration of Thane’s success.

  So many unknowns.

  Theoretical: action must be predicated on the known skill of allies.

  Practical: attack at the opportune moment based on the presumption of skill.

  He gave Thane a few more precious seconds.

  Then he leapt from the tunnel, leading Squad Crozius towards the main cable’s junction.

  The moon’s power plant was the size of a city. The cavern was so huge that Koorland could not make out the far walls. Haas brought Sword to an entrance on the floor of the cave. Her sense of how the shafts worked had been accurate, and the squad had moved quickly. They had encountered a few groups, quickly despatched, of the dwarfish greenskins.

  Now the Deathwatch was surrounded by generators larger than hab-blocks. They were hulking machines, squat despite their height. It was impossible to see more than a few hundred metres in any direction. The generators sat at all angles on the cavern floor. The paths running between them were wide, but never straight for more than a few dozen metres.

  A tangled forest of cables ran between the generators. They trembled and convulsed with surges. Sparks flew from flawed junctions and haloes of lightning crackled down their lengths. The din was immense, a deep, continuous tremor that vibrated deep in Koorland’s chest. The sound was so thick, it tried to stop his hearing. The sharp snap of energy cut through the tremor with a searing arrhythmia. The cavern rumbled and shrieked with the roars of beasts and the hiss of serpents. It rang with the endless, grating choir of xenos industry.

  ‘There is the power of a small sun here,’ Simmias said as they paused at the entrance. ‘We cannot cut in blindly.’

  ‘And we come to steal this energy, not to destroy it,’ said Koorland.

  In the flashing gloom, orks clambered up and down the generators. The energy production was so violent, every few moments Koorland saw an electrocuted greenskin tumble from the heights of the machines.

  ‘There are so many generators,’ Vepar said. ‘How can we let Gladius know which node to shut down for us?’

  ‘We take the nearest,’ Simmias said. ‘Damage it, but do not destroy it.’

  Vepar turned to the Ultramarine. ‘That smacks of messy improvisation.’

  ‘There is no perfection in this situation,’ Simmias told him. ‘The practical is constructed from the necessary.’

  ‘Improvisation, in other words,’ Vepar said. Koorland thought there was a glint of amusement in his tone.

  Thane’s declaration of war came through the vox. ‘We go now!’ Koorland shouted.

  Squad Sword raced towards the nearest generator. The labouring orks saw the Space Marines and Haas and roared in surprise and rage. From the ground and from the scaffolding of the generators, they opened fire. The rain of bullets was disorganised. The aim was wild.

  Hakon Icegrip took the lead of the charge, ripping through orks with frost blade and bolt pistol. He howled as he ran, the fury of his voice a terrifying, distorted rasp from his vox-casters, a monstrous cry at once animal and machine. The squealing orklings fled before him. Icegrip gave their masters no time to respond. He ploughed through an explosion of blood and flesh.

  Haas was not far behind him. She sprinted from enemy to enemy, her shock maul at full power, its blows immobilising and burning the orks before she finished them with autopistol rounds to their skulls. She was shouting, but Koorland could make out no words. Her cries were a pure expression of vengeance and rage. She had returned to the moon to avenge a defeat, and to purge her nightmares of the billions dead.

  Vepar moved in tandem with Koorland. The Blood Angel used his bolter, cutting down orks that tried to close in on the flanks of Icegrip and Haas. Vepar fired in precise short bursts. Every pull of the trigger counted. Where he looked, greenskin heads burst apart. There was a careful art to his kills, a restrained wrath channelled into a perfection of aim, as if something worse were held in check by the force of discipline. Hanniel and Simmias followed at a more measured pace. They were no less destructive, their bolter fire systematic.

  The run from the tunnel to the generator covered hundreds of metres in a single, relentless burst of speed. As the squad approached the huge device, Simmias’ fire turned from the orks to the generator. He shot at the junction points on the near facade, blowing away cables. They fell, lashing back and forth. Hanniel reached out for the orks on the scaffolding. An eldritch storm bellowed over the generator, wher two lightnings entwined and fought, the warp against the materium. Orks screamed, incinerated by the warring forces, their corpses dropping, falling to ash before they reached the ground. The generator was enveloped in coruscating power.

  The kill-team reached the base of the generator, tore through its defenders, then rounded a corner. Ahead was a cable twice Koorland’s height.

  ‘There,’ said Simmias. ‘That one.’

  ‘Thane,’ Koorland voxed. ‘We have our target. Do you see it? Shut it down!’

  The ork engineers were ready for Gladius. Thane and Warfist burst across the threshold first. Three engineers faced them. They were large beasts, made even larger by the harnesses they wore. Power coils and portable generators rose from the greenskins’ shoulders and backs like the arcing spines of saurians. The air around them shimmered. Static broke out across Thane’s auto-senses as they reacted to an overload of energy. He had trouble focusing on the targets. Their image juddered, a cracking mosaic, and his lenses fought to stabilise. He paused and fired. His shells exploded on contact with the orks’ force fields.

  Warfist snarled with frustration and rage. He hurled himself at the nearest engineer and the force field flared from the impact of the lightning claws, then collapsed with a deafening concussion. Warfist grappled with the ork. It struck him with a heavy tool that resembled a fusion of a shock maul and a plasma cutter. Electricity and flame washed over the Space Wolf’s armour.

  The other two orks came at Thane with similar weapons. He maglocked his boltgun and raised his chainsword, throwing himself at the closest ork, using his mass and velocity against the barrier of the shield. He felt the resistance as an invisible force that pushed against him and stabbed through his armour and his body with powerful jolts. A vibrating numbness suffused his limbs. He pushed on, the chainsword sparking and shrieking. There was a blast, and his blade moved quickly again. He brought it down on the ork’s skull and cut it in half before it could hit him with its weapon.

  Warfist punched through the shocks and flame and jammed his lightning claws through his opponent’s throat. Before the third ork could attack either Space Marine, Abathar entered the control centre and hit the beast with his power axe. Two energy fields collided. The interior of the centre blazed with their fury, then the axe blade broke through. It severed the largest of the ork’s energy coils. The harness exploded, consuming the ork and hurling Abathar back out of the entrance. He was back in the next breath.

  Outside, Forcas and Straton held off the orks seeking to retake the centre. The speed of the counter-attack did not concern Thane. He had expected such a response as soon as Gladius had attacked. What worried him was its strength. The orks already numbered more than a hundred. The choke point of the ramp and the lack of shelter gave the Deathwatch an advantage, but two defenders would not be able to hold off the horde for long. Warfist lunged out of the doorw
ay to join them.

  Koorland’s report came over the vox.

  ‘Sword is ready,’ Thane told Abathar. The Techmarine nodded and approached the control surfaces of the centre. They were crude and massive, like everything else fashioned by orkish hands, but Thane regarded them with more wariness than contempt. The power the orks wielded belied the rough construction.

  There is technology here that is beyond our own, he reminded himself. The controls were a conglomeration of huge, clumsy levers, switches and buttons. They flashed with bursts of energy. Thane could not tell if the flares were overloads, short circuits, or if they were deliberate. Since the giant coils at each corner of the centre gave off so much excess, it was as if the centre were caught in a perpetual storm. Thane had no way to guess if the small blasts from the controls were by design or not.

  Beyond the control surfaces, there was no wall. The centre was perched on the very edge of the promontory. Thane had a perspective of the entire power plant, of kilometres of colossal, linked generators. From this height, he felt as if he were looking into a cauldron of lightning. He could see no order to the construction. It seemed to be haphazard, machines piled atop machines, connections as superfluous as they were dangerous.

  How were these beings a threat? he wondered. How had they not destroyed themselves? How could any of this work? How had it not blown up the instant it was activated?

  The questions multiplied, though he knew there would be no answers. The Mechanicus might know them. Perhaps not. The answers did not matter. The action did.

  Seconds had passed since the death of the ork engineers. Thane contained his impatience as Abathar examined the controls. The seconds were precious. Yet a mistake would be catastrophic.

  Abathar was cautious. His helmet moved back and forth as he scanned the controls. He touched nothing, though Thane sensed the speed of his evaluation. After a few moments, his attention focused on a section of the controls to the far left. He looked back and forth between the cavern and the technological jumble before him. ‘There,’ he said. He pointed to flames at the extreme left of the cavern. ‘That is a true fire.’