Watchers in Death

by David Annandale

  To the rear, the explosions continued. Destruction spread, feeding greedily. Another cannon erupted, and deeper in the hull, a shell was triggered by the impacts of the blasts. It set more off. The battleship groaned as a chain reaction tore apart the interior of its port side.

  Thane passed through the entrance of the gun chamber. The flames reached ahead of him, but he could see the rest of the Deathwatch now, and he could see the stairs leading back down the levels, back towards Abathar.

  A great thunder resounded. An earthquake shook the battleship, hurling orks from catwalks. One of the connections to the teleport homer broke free. The cable slashed back and forth, spraying lightning. Abathar seized it with the servo-arm claw. He struggled to reattach it and finish the rest of the assembly. The tremors became even more violent, knocking many of the greenskins off their feet, slowing their attack. Some managed to cling to the side of the generator and climb up to his position. Bestial faces came over the edge just as he was closing the last of the circuits. Without releasing his work, he turned the plasma cutter on them.

  The power coil wavered back and forth. Metal groaned. The crimson energy flickered, then steadied.

  The explosions continued. Abathar had the sense of the battleship suffering wounds at a profound level. Had it been an Imperial ship, its machine-spirit would have been screaming. Abathar grunted with satisfaction. Well done, brothers, he thought. He finished his work, and the homer began to charge. The red glow spread over its cylinders.

  Abathar turned from his work in time to put bolt-shells into the skulls of three more orks climbing the generator. On the deck, the greenskins had found their feet. Not all of them were trying to reach him now. The blast doors on all levels of the enginarium were grinding down. Streams of orks flowed through them, rushing to fight the true threat, or so they thought.

  ‘Gladius,’ Abathar voxed, ‘it is time we departed.’

  ‘On our way,’ Thane replied. ‘What is our best approach?’

  Abathar looked up at the conduit that had brought him here. Though new fissures had appeared in its surface, it still appeared sound. ‘The way I came.’

  ‘We won’t be alone.’

  ‘Understood.’

  He gunned down a group of orks running across the catwalk towards him. Bullets smacked against his armour and dug into the cabling around him. Some greenskins had chosen to shoot from positions atop other generators. He moved closer to the catwalk, drawing their fire away from the power coil and the teleport homer. He had to save ork technology from being damaged by its creators. He stood tall, weathering the hits, placing his return fire carefully, pulping skulls at a distance.

  The mercy was that the orks labouring in the enginarium were not the largest or most heavily armed warriors. They were here because they were forced to be by their stronger brothers. Outnumbered scores to one, Abathar held his ground.

  The homer charged. The ship’s tremors began to diminish. Abathar sensed time running out.

  ‘Gladius,’ he began, about to urge haste. He didn’t finish. On the deck below, time ran out.

  A monster strode through the blast door. It was twice the height of a Dreadnought. Its armour was so thick, it seemed to be wearing the hull of a Land Raider. It carried a gun larger than an autocannon.

  ‘Gladius,’ Abathar said again, ‘there is no more time.’

  ‘Hold fast,’ Thane replied.

  Abathar moved to his right, behind the wall of cables once more, further away from the power coil. He braced himself to fight the unstoppable.

  The behemoth pulled the trigger. Its gun spat a thudding barrage of solid slugs. They smashed through generator walls and cut through cables. They set off a string of explosions and fires, a line of destruction marking the arc of the monster’s aim. The beast brought the gun up towards Abathar’s position. It was indiscriminate in its fire. It did not care what it destroyed. It revelled in the mad joy of devastation.

  The conduit above Abathar shook with the tread of heavy boots and the concussion of bolter fire.

  Abathar aimed his bolt pistol at the ork’s skull. He targeted the gap in the armour where the tusked jaw snarled. He fired. The shells smashed the ork’s fangs. They punched into the back of its throat.

  It barely noticed.

  The monster’s cannon shells pounded the cable barrier apart. Massive blows struck Abathar in the chest and threw him backwards. He fell in a tangle of wreckage, his armour cracked, servo-motors slipping and stuttering.

  The other four members of Squad Gladius dropped out of the conduit. They fired back into it. The pipe trembled from the weight of the pursuing horde. It began to sag.

  Abathar pushed himself to his feet. The giant ork had paused to examine its handiwork. Abathar forced movement into his legs and made for the teleport homer.

  ‘It must be now,’ he said.

  The Deathwatch gathered around the homer. Orks poured from the conduit. The giant aimed its gun at the power coil. It fired again as Abathar triggered the homer.

  And then, there truly was no more time.

  Nine

  The void – Nadiries

  As before, the human and the ork made war in a realm of energy. For an immeasurable moment, the last stop before disaster, the clash of technologies was a stalemate, and the tiniest sliver of the power was channelled in its proper path. The homer responded as it was designed to do, and transferred the Deathwatch from the ork battleship to the Herald of Night. Then the stalemate collapsed. The forces of the human and the ork technologies destroyed each other in their rage. Half the vessel’s engine block vanished, disassembled past the subatomic. What remained erupted. An event far more traumatic than rupture struck the engine core. A star was cut in half. It died howling.

  A shockwave produced by the severing of reality flashed across the ork fleet. The battleship vanished in a supernova cry of light. The wave blasted the nearby ships to fiery dust. Further out, it snapped escorts and cruisers in half. The wave lost force quickly as it travelled and the outer elements of the ork fleet survived. Barely. Ships floated in the void without power. Atmospheres vented through huge rents in the hulls. Fires swept through entire levels, never to be extinguished.

  The Herald of Night emerged from the deep dark to bring judgement on what remained.

  The dislocation seized Thane again. The ripping apart, the disintegration of identity one with the annihilation of reality. The transfer was so much more brutal than with unmodified Imperial teleporters. In the wrench of the process came the sense of a monstrous excess of energy. Of something unleashed. And of a danger to the soul.

  The device was bestial. It was unclean.

  It was also gone.

  Thane blinked, acknowledging his and his squad’s return to being on the Herald of Night. They shook off the sickness of the translation and made for the bridge. There they joined Adnachiel, Wienand and Veritus in the strategium. They watched the end of the ork fleet through the oculus. Veritus looked grim, disturbed by what he’d seen. Wienand seemed both awed and thoughtful.

  ‘And so it is accomplished,’ she said. ‘Five Space Marines have destroyed a fleet. Impressive.’

  ‘There is a cost to these actions,’ Forcas said. He was breathing heavily. He spoke with a great effort of calm, as if he were still struggling to hold his identity together. His fangs were bared. He kept his gaze on the deck. ‘The means we employed… Such things cannot be undertaken lightly.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Wienand. ‘Proper safeguards must be put in place.’

  Thane glanced at her sharply. She looked back, face carefully neutral.

  He chose not to ask her what she meant. The mission was paramount. ‘What have we learned about the situation planetside?’ he asked Adnachiel.

  ‘Auspex scans have confirmed the coordinates of the fortress. We have bought the defenders a little time.’

&
nbsp; ‘No more than that?’

  ‘The orks landed a large invasion force. The fortress’ defences no longer need to be aimed at the fleet, so there is no division of fire. But that will not be enough.’

  ‘I sense you’re about to tell me something most unwelcome.’

  ‘We have been picking up a concentrated energy signature. The orks have something very large approaching the fortress.’

  ‘How large?’

  ‘To judge from these readings, a giant walking machine, an ork Titan.’

  I was right, Thane thought. That was not welcome at all. ‘Can we attempt an orbital bombardment?’

  ‘Not with any assurance of preserving the fortress,’ Adnachiel said. ‘The orks’ intent with their bombardment was purely destructive.’

  ‘While ours is not. Understood. Thank you, Master Adnachiel.’

  Thane turned to the others. ‘We have a siege to break and a Titan to kill,’ he said.

  The Penitent Wrath descended to the surface of the dark planet. The battlefield was still heated by the ork bombardment, and the temporary atmosphere was an orange-brown haze lit by the explosions of shells and the streaks of energy weapons. Qaphsiel flew as low as he dared over the orks, bringing out the details of the enemy from the great night. The region surrounding the fortress was an obscurity filled with a brutal, shifting mass. The flash of cannons illuminated the greenskins for a fraction of a second. If they knew about the destruction of their fleet, they did not appear to be troubled by it. This was an army on the march to victory.

  That victory had not yet come, though, and Thane now saw how the fortress had held out for as long as it had. The keep was built at the top of a solitary peak. The mountain rose from the centre of a crater kilometres wide, as if the molten fountain from an asteroid impact had congealed back to rock in mid-flight. The slopes were steep, almost vertical, and jagged. Towering above the bowl of the crater, the fortress covered the entire peak. It was even more jagged than the mountain. It was a cluster of towers, walls fused together, rising one above the other. At the centre, the tallest spire stabbed at the infinite night. From a distance, it looked thin and sharp as a sword blade. The lower ramparts were studded with automated turrets. They rotated back and forth, cannons raining destruction on the orks below.

  The greenskins raged at the base of the mountain. There was no path up. The infantry tried to climb, but was defeated by the cliffs and the punishing fire from above. They retaliated with their artillery. Hundreds of cannons and mortars battered the mountain and the fortress. They resisted. They stood fast. But the constant attack eroded the walls. It hammered at the mountainside, triggering rockslides. Given enough time, Thane thought, the mountain would be hit until there were handholds up its entire height, or the peak would be shot through and come crashing down into the crater, the fortress falling from the darkness of the sky to the darkness of the ground. Or, the last ork would finally be blasted to dust by the wall guns.

  Given enough time.

  There would not be enough time. The orks had no patience. They were bringing forth a monster to end time.

  The ork Titan was sixty metres tall. It too was a mountain, one of iron. It lumbered across the crater, rocking side to side with each step. Its shape was squat in spite of its height. Thane pictured the walkers the Last Wall had fought on Caldera. This was many times larger. Its head alone was larger than the dome of Vultus. The Titan was fashioned in the shape of a monstrous ork, and Thane could well imagine the machine would inspire the worship of the infantry scurrying like insects at its feet.

  An energy cannon emerged from the monster’s right eye, turning its mere gaze into a holocaust. There were other turrets all along its shoulders and flanks. But they were not the worst danger. One of its limbs ended in another energy weapon, claw-shaped, an electrode three metres long between the tips. The other arm was a double-barrelled cannon the size of the ones the Deathwatch had destroyed on the battleship. From the centre of its bodily mass another gun protruded, even larger.

  The central gun fired. The flash illuminated the entire battlefield. Thane caught a frozen glimpse of thousands of orks exulting in the roar of their monstrous machine. The shell slammed into the mountainside. The explosion was gigantic. Boulders flew like hail. A dust cloud rose, then fell in the weak atmosphere.

  The mountain trembled for long seconds after the impact. The ork Titan took another few steps, then fired again at the same spot. It raised its huge gun arm and let loose two more shots in quick succession.

  Thane was sure he saw the mountain weaken. He knew he had not. He could see little of the battlefield beyond flashes, except for those vehicles with lamps. The Titan was well illuminated. It was a thing of brutish glory, and the orks wanted it celebrated.

  And yet…

  The power of the blasts unleashed by the ork Titan convinced him the fortress was not long for this world.

  ‘Take us above the Titan,’ he told Qaphsiel. ‘As close as you can.’

  ‘So ordered.’

  Qaphsiel flew in from behind. The colossus continued its slow, steady, relentlessly destructive walk. There would be nothing left by the time it reached the mountain. As the Penitent Wrath closed in, Abathar said, ‘There. By the left-hand shoulder. A platform.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Thane. He turned to the inquisitors. They wore armoured environment suits. ‘You are ready?’ They were to enter the citadel and speak with the Sisters of Silence. He did not relish the thought of an inquisitor making first contact with the order, but there was no choice. ‘Once the Titan is destroyed, we can coordinate the Sisters’ exit from the fortress.’

  ‘You are assuming they will agree to do so,’ Wienand said.

  ‘I am assuming nothing. But you know as well as I do that the Imperium needs them to agree.’

  Wienand nodded.

  ‘They will agree,’ Veritus said.

  ‘I envy your certainty,’ said Thane. He thought about what it meant to have obliterated the traces of their existence, and to have retreated to a location so absolute in its isolation. He did not think an agreement would be easy to obtain. Qaphsiel had been hailing the fortress since the Penitent Wrath had begun its descent. The only hint of an answer had been the appearance of a single point of illumination at the highest point of the citadel.

  The Thunderhawk dropped lower. Qaphsiel took it in at a steep dive. Veritus and Wienand were held firmly by their grav-harnesses. Abathar opened the side door and the Deathwatch stood before the opening, ready to jump. There was only a slight wind. The atmosphere was beginning to freeze again. Nitrogen snow blew inside the gunship. A cold beyond words came in with it.

  The temperature could not reach Thane through his armour. The readouts of his auto-senses told him what it was. Yet he sensed it, too. The dark and the cold of the nameless world cried out with such force it was as if there were a huge wind, howling loss at the cosmos. This was a place beyond mourning, beyond the grave. Abandonment, rejection, betrayal, judgement, punishment – they were all part of the great night. They were, he thought, the very mortar of the fortress.

  The shoulders of the ork Titan were broad and flat, landing pads, Thane guessed, for aircraft. They were clear except for a single anti-air cannon at the rear of each pad. The barrels were long, stretching across half the length of the shoulders. The Penitent Wrath roared towards the left-hand pad. In the last moments of the approach, the orks finally realised there was an airborne enemy in the field. The turrets began to turn. The cannons opened fire immediately, when they were still facing away from the gunship. Their massive shells burst in the air, brief suns in the endless night. Qaphsiel pushed the Penitent Wrath harder, racing against the left turret’s rotation.

  Still behind the Titan, the Thunderhawk dropped below the shoulder, then came back up, flying level. The platform came closer. The turret was a third of the way through its rotation. In another
moment, the length of its barrel would be in the gunship’s flight path.

  Thane braced. He heard the whine of the turbofans as they began to alter the ship’s trajectory. Qaphsiel fired the retro-nozzles, slowing the flight. The deck angled up. Thane began his leap with the landing pad still ahead. He was in the air just as the Thunderhawk passed over the edge of the Titan’s shoulder. He and the squad landed, rolling off the momentum. The engine whine became a scream. The Penitent Wrath climbed sharply, pushing up with all the force of its turbofans. Its nose passed over the cannon. The anti-air guns fired interlocking streams of shells, but the gunship rose faster than the orks could adjust their aim. It flew on, higher, gathering yet more speed as it made for the high spire of the fortress.

  Thane rose to his feet. His Deathwatch brothers at his side, he ran towards the Titan’s head. The platform tilted up and down with each rocking step of the weapon. The head was a massive, grimacing icon of a monstrous deity. It was surrounded by a rampart of teeth, the gaps between them like huge, clumsy crenellations. Their construction was as rough, patchwork and monolithic as the rest of the monster. Thane found plenty of handholds. Gladius climbed the teeth and dropped into the space beyond. It was wide as a town square.

  In the head’s left eye, heavy-calibre guns opened up. Their fire swept across the empty space towards the Deathwatch.

  Close in, the fortress was just as angular and bladed as it had appeared from a distance. The towers were clusters of close-standing spikes. They made Wienand think of a forest of lightning claws jutting from mailed fists. Turrets tracked the Penitent Wrath as it climbed the heights of the fortress. They tracked, but they did not fire.

  ‘A good sign?’ Wienand said to Veritus.

  ‘Not the worst, at least.’

  The high tower had a small landing pad just below its tapered peak. It was the site of that single, harsh light. Qaphsiel approached it slowly. A gun mounted into the wall of the spire followed silently. The Thunderhawk came down on the pad. Wienand approached the open side door. The gun, five metres up, was pointed directly at her. She jumped down to the flagstones. Veritus followed her. The gun did not move.