Watchers in Death

by David Annandale

  In spite of his youth, and the fact that most of the Ultramarines now listening to him had more battlefield experience than he did, Cassius’ words seemed to lock the congregation in place. His very presence demanded that he be heard.

  ‘What is it that makes a single Ultramarine worth ten thousand of the enemy, and more?’ began Cassius. ‘Is it wargear from the forges of Macragge? The bolter and the chainsword, and the blessed power armour, are more than the equal of anything the greenskins can field. Is it the wisdom of the Codex Astartes that guides us in war, flowing from the hand of the Primarch Guilliman? Is it the augmentations within us all that make us more than men? No. All these things make us strong, but not victorious.’

  Donatus watched the sermon from the passenger compartment of the Stormraven that had brought the veteran squad back to the Ultramarines staging post. Having fought the greenskin mek and so needing to observe their wargear rites, the veterans had been excused from attending the sermon with their other battle-brothers. Donatus opened up the casing of his bolter, cycling the weapon to check the smoothness of its action.

  ‘He has a way with words,’ said Brother Adelmo, who was forcing out the dents that the greenskin had left in his armour. ‘I’ll give the boy that.’

  ‘Just because we count ourselves as First Company veterans,’ said Sergeant Tatianus, ‘that doesn’t mean he has nothing for us to hear.’

  ‘It was not flowery words that bade me fight,’ said Brother Felidus. ‘The Codex gives any of us reason enough. Is this what the newly blooded among us react to, though? Sermons and exhortations? Just knowing the orks exist should be enough.’

  ‘You were like them once, Felidus,’ Tatianus muttered. ‘You were not born into the galaxy a fully formed Sternguard. Cassius is young, but he deserves our respect.’

  ‘And he’s right about one thing,’ said Adelmo. ‘There are a lot of greenskins in that city.’

  ‘You’re not bored with killing orks?’ asked Felidus mockingly. ‘I would have thought the Deathwatch had fed you your fill.’

  Adelmo tapped the silvered skull that hung among the purity seals and battle-honours on his chestplate. ‘The first lesson the Deathwatch taught me, brother,’ said Adelmo, ‘is that there are never enough dead xenos.’

  Donatus watched Chaplain Cassius spread his arms, brandishing his crozius arcanum, the short club-like power weapon topped with gilded eagle’s wings. ‘Yes, brothers – it is our fury that makes us victorious!’ he exclaimed. ‘Our rage! The unrelenting fruits of our hatred! This is what makes us the equal of an army of orks. Drink deep of that ocean of fury within you. Let it drive your arm, your bolter and your blade, into the hateful corpse of your enemy!’

  The Chaplain pointed to the Sternguard. A dozen heads turned to regard them.

  ‘Witness the slaying of the greenskin mek by Brother Donatus of the First Company! It was with rage and hate that he brought the alien low. Learn from such examples and turn your own fury into a weapon deadlier than a whole army of xenos!’

  ‘Behold the rage of Donatus,’ said Felidus, smirking as he cleaned the chapel dust from the eye-lenses of his helmet. ‘Grab a handhold, brothers, lest the storm of his anger blow us all away...’

  Donatus shot him a look. He let his bolter’s action slide home and shut the casing. It had not been fury that had brought down the ork mek. It had been a cold, level-headed and thorough approach to war. A suppression of his anger, not a release of it.

  ‘If that is what they need to hear,’ said Donatus, ‘then let him say it.’

  ‘Let the greenskin stand before us!’ Cassius continued. ‘For we shall mow him down! Let the ork defy us, for we shall scorch him in the flames of our rage! I give thanks for the battle almost upon us, for we shall sweep away the greenskins on the great storm of our fury!’

  The Ultramarines clapped their fists to their breastplates in a warrior’s salute. In the distance, beyond the Astra Militarum encampments and motor pools, the ork-lit fires and smokestacks of Skemarchus billowed their smoky foulness into the sky.

  This planet was already a place of smothering heat, but within hours it would be completely aflame.

  Atmospheric silicate dust rained against the lower hull of the gunship, forcing it to pitch and yaw as the pilot wrestled against the fierce updraughts. The shifting expanses of molten rock below welled up from the planet’s mantle, belching the raw geothermal heat of the core into the air.

  Donatus held onto an overhead handle and watched through the armoured gunport as the Stormraven headed in low beneath the level of Skemarchus’ streets. The city was built on a series of enormous platforms, its foundations sunk deep into the lava flow. Vast furnaces stood among heaped-up tenements and machine shops, part solid and fortress-like, part ramshackle death trap, all baked in the merciless heat hammering up from beneath. The sky over Skemarchus was smudgy darkness, fed by the foundry smokestacks and the new fires that consumed whole districts.

  Even from a distance, the city was a torn and agonised wreck. Towers were toppled. Whole foundry-fortresses were torn open, laying bare their steel entrails to the sky, riddled with flame. One of the main platforms had sunk into the lava and was slowly being consumed, a brick and girder at a time.

  ‘The greenskins despoil even that which they can turn to their use,’ said Felidus, watching through the gunport beside Donatus. ‘Like some in-built allergy to civilisation, they have to tear it down.’

  ‘There’s enough of Skemarchus left for them to repurpose,’ replied Sergeant Tatianus. ‘If we don’t dislodge them they’ll turn the place into a factory for their war machines. That thing we fought at the chapel was just one of their meks – this place has drawn a thousand of them and their warbands.’

  ‘Orks are vermin,’ spat Felidus. ‘They won’t surrender. They’re too stupid to give up.’

  ‘Do not dismiss the greenskin mind,’ said Adelmo. ‘A single ork is bestial and crude. But in sufficient numbers they show a ­cunning that too many of the Emperor’s armies have underestimated. Underestimating the intelligence of the alien will get you killed. I saw that much in the Deathwatch – we lost many good brothers who failed to learn that lesson.’

  ‘I know well how dangerous the ork can be,’ said Felidus. ‘I am saying they will not break like an army of men. We’re going to have to kill them all.’

  ‘One minute!’ came the vox from the pilot, Brother Otho. From below the edge of the nearest city-platform, it was possible to see the spaceport, a wide expanse of rockcrete overhanging the edge, the underside festooned with fuel pipes and coolant ducts. Control towers and comms-aerials rose over the landing pad, and as the gunship rose over the edge of the pad the scattering of ork emplacements came into view.

  ‘They’re holding it in force,’ said Felidus.

  ‘Of course they are,’ said Adelmo. ‘Like the sergeant said, they’re not stupid.’

  ‘They’re standing in our way,’ said Felidus grimly. ‘That’s the most stupid decision they’ll ever make.’

  The gunships had come in low to avoid any anti-aircraft capacity the orks had at the spaceport. Along with the Sternguard Stormraven, another pair of gunships carried a force from Third Company led by Chaplain Cassius. As they crested the level of the landing pad, fire stuttered towards the strike force, ill-aimed but heavy volleys that traced burning chains between the gunships.

  Donatus felt the Stormraven banking, and the view of the landing pad and the foundries behind it tilted as the gunship swept in towards the designated landing point.

  The landing pad was covered in ork fortifications and firepoints, and the gunships would be hard-pressed to make a safe landing. With all the orks and their fortifications cleared away, the landing pad would be capable of receiving much larger ships, from bulk cargo craft to troop transports. That was the purpose of the Ultramarines’ mission – to seize the spaceport, and open up a way for
the Astra Militarum to land their troops directly in the centre of Skemarchus. Already units of soldiers were grinding into the edge of the city, supported by the rest of Third Company, but it would take them months to make headway fighting room to room through the outskirts. With a spaceport under Imperial control, armies could be sent into the heart of the city to begin forcing back the orks on multiple fronts.

  If the spaceport was captured. If Chaplain Cassius and the Sternguard could break the greenskin hold, and open up the gates of Skemarchus.

  The Stormraven swept over the landing pad. Scurrying orks shot by in a blur as they ran to take up firing positions. A few anti-aircraft rounds thunked into the hull and the Stormraven bucked.

  ‘Ten seconds,’ Otho’s voice came again. ‘Deploying ramp.’

  Donatus felt the Stormraven rearing and slewing under Otho’s control – the pilot had trained with the Chapter’s Techmarines, and his skills on the controls were as honed as Donatus’ behind a bolter. Donatus felt a spark of admiration for him, for though he might not be named in Cassius’ sermons he was needed just as keenly if the Ultramarines were to wrench victory from the greenskins. As the Third Company’s best pilot he had been assigned to transport the Sternguard, the most resilient and disciplined of the First Company’s veterans.

  The rear ramp of the passenger compartment swung open. The fuel-heavy air of Skemarchus swirled in with a roar. Brother Felidus hefted his storm bolter and fixed it to the mount on the open rampway, aiming the weapon out of the back of the gunship. The pilot tilted the gunship onto its tail as the front retros fired and Felidus opened fire at the greenkins running for cover, stitching explosive bolts across the stained rockcrete of the landing pad.

  ‘We’re down!’ voxed Sergeant Tatianus.

  ‘We are moments behind you,’ replied Chaplain Cassius over the strike force’s vox-net. ‘Heed the word of Guilliman! As it is written, so it shall be!’

  The lower edge of the ramp touched down. Brother Adelmo was first out, firing as he jumped down onto the landing pad. Donatus and Tatianus followed, ducking low, Felidus’ heavy bolter fire hammering above them.

  The nearest cover was a massive steel docking clamp covered in bright ork graffiti, with a clutch of severed heads hanging from a crossbeam. A grimacing ork vaulted over the clamp and Donatus ran right at it.

  A normal soldier would run from the enemy and seek safety, but a Space Marine knew that fleeing was the best way to give the enemy a chance to kill him without worrying about a return shot. Donatus raised his bolter, leaning into the stock as he ran, and let a tight cluster of shots fly. Three bolter shells smacked into the ork, ripping through its patchwork armour of blue-painted steel and detonating inside. The ork’s chest was burst open and the xenos pitched face-first onto the rockcrete, dead before it hit the ground, lungs blown out through its back like shredded crimson wings.

  Donatus slid into cover beside Adelmo. Behind him, Felidus was hauling the heavy bolter towards them.

  ‘There’s too much fire,’ Otho voxed. ‘I’m covering from above, where I can go to evasive.’

  ‘We wish you clear skies, brother!’ Sergeant Tatianus replied.

  In battle the Sternguard served as an anchor point, a walking fortification that would hold the whole line intact while the rest of the Ultramarines prosecuted the battle plan. Roboute Guilliman had seen the need for such Space Marines to be organised together and deployed as one to maximise their effectiveness, and thus the doctrines of the Sternguard were found in the pages of Codex Astartes. Now they were the first down, the Ultramarines battle line would form.

  The other pair of Stormravens touched down and the Third Company Ultramarines jumped out, spreading their fire in all directions, stuttering disciplined volleys at any ork in sight. Cassius landed just as a group of greenskins charged at the Ultramarines, the aliens eager to reap the glory of cutting down the intruders.

  Half of the orks died as they leapt the barricade they had been sheltering behind. One was blasted to crimson mist by a burst of heavy bolter fire from one of the Stormravens. Others were shredded by bolter shells. Cassius ran forwards, crozius in hand, and slammed into the lead ork.

  The greenskin was an oversized brute clad in armour scraps and tattered xenos hides. Its left forearm had been replaced by a huge claw with blades like a set of industrial shears. The claw jabbed forwards and Cassius met it with his crozius. The weapon’s power field discharged and the claw shattered, its blades spinning off, broken and scorched. The ork bellowed and Cassius rammed a fist into its mouth, splintering its teeth.

  Cassius brought the crozius up into the ork’s ribs. Another greenskin tried to get behind the Chaplain but the Ultramarines were spreading out around Cassius and one of them put a bolter round through the ork’s spine. Cassius tore the crozius out again, bringing entrails and shards of broken rib with it, then slammed the weapon down to hit right between the huge ork’s eyes.

  Donatus heard the cheer that went up from his battle-brothers as the front of the ork’s face caved in. It slumped to its knees, and Cassius smashed the crozius into the side of its head. The recharged power field discharged again and the upper half of the ork’s skull was obliterated, spilling brains like wine from a chalice.

  More anti-air fire was streaking overhead, dangerously low. It was too high to threaten the Ultramarines on the ground but the Stormravens were in danger of being picked off. The pilots took them up higher where they could weave out of the orks’ gunsights and support with strafing runs from the air. The Ultramarines made for cover near the Sternguard, continuing to fire on the few orks that showed themselves.

  ‘He could have stood back and let the bolters take those greenskins down,’ said Donatus. ‘No need to risk himself.’

  ‘But then, what would we have to cheer?’ replied Adelmo.

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  A Black Library Publication

  First published in Great Britain in 2016

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