Deathwatch

by Steve Parker

  Still, such unwelcome attention was hardly new to her. Fine genes were one of the primary assets for which she had been chosen, and she used them to the fullest, as she was expected to, even commanded to. But orders or not, it made her feel unclean, and that in turn made her wrathful. She had hated Dozois from the first, that simple, foolish man. But, as was always the case, greater need had forced her to put personal feelings aside. She had played her role to perfection: Lady Fara Devanon, aristocratic daughter of a minor House struggling to improve its lot; a woman firm in the knowledge of her feminine allure, but aware, too, that this was a coin to be spent only once. Give a man like Dozois exactly what he sought and you lost all power over him. The character Lady Fara, much like the woman who played her, valued her self-respect.

  Pray we do not meet under other circumstances, you inbred fool! For I’ll surely kill you if we do.

  Thoughts only, an empty threat, but the mental image that accompanied them pleased her. In all likelihood, she would never see Dozois again after today. It was time to put the foolish man aside, time to focus on the next phase of the operation. Her transit to Chiaro was at its end. On arrival in Cholixe, her work would begin in earnest.

  She knew little of what lay ahead, but that was hardly new either. According to His Lordship, there were other assets already in play. Something on Chiaro had demanded the special attention of the Ordo Xenos. She would discover its nature soon enough.

  And then, if so commanded, she would destroy it.

  8

  The black bulk of the Stormraven assault transport hovered ten metres over the kill-block roof on tongues of blue fire. Cables dropped from side and rear hatches. There was a sharp shout from inside.

  ‘Kill-team, go!’

  Three slab-muscled figures in black fatigues dropped at speed, controlling their descent with gloved hands only. Slung across their backs were boltguns, slightly smaller and more compact than those they were used to. Cinched around waist and chest, they wore combat webbing stocked with grenades and other tactical equipment. Boots hit the rooftop with a subdued, tread-muffled thump. Immediately, the three spread out, securing east, west and north edges of the building, leaning out, visually sweeping the windows and balconies below for sign of enemy sentries.

  Two others dropped a second later. Onboard winches whipped the droplines back up, and the Stormraven lifted away, tilting as it left the infil point.

  The last two figures to drop darted to the north edge of the roof. As soon as they were in place, all five operatives pulled a small pistol-like device from a holster in their webbing, pressed the muzzle to the permacrete lip at the edge of the roof, and pulled the trigger. There was a crumping sound and five little coughs of dust. Each figure pulled on his pistol and a length of black polyfibre cable started to unspool from inside the grip. With a brief tug to check each line was secure, the five stepped onto the permacrete lip, turned, and dropped backwards from the edges of the roof.

  Karras pushed off with his legs, flying out a little way from the surface of the wall, and released the trigger on the pistol. He dropped about three metres, then pulled the trigger again, arresting his descent. He swung back in and braced his legs on the wall, then bunched his muscles, ready for another push off. To his right, Ignacio Solarion, the Ultramarine, did the same. When Karras had paired them up, he’d said nothing, but the look on his face had hardly been one of joy.

  Below, a broad semicircular balcony extended out from the wall. From that balcony, a wide set of plastek double-doors offered access to the kill-block’s rooms and corridors.

  Together, Karras and Solarion dropped to the balcony and abandoned their ziplines. They took position on either side of the double doors, backs pressed to the wall. Solarion looked over at Karras, his pale blue eyes cold and hard. Karras nodded for him to proceed. From his webbing, Solarion took a small canister with a long, tubular nozzle, then stuck his head out to check there were no hostiles on the other side of the panes of transparent plastek Seeing none, he stepped to the centre, lifted his canister, and began to spray a large, irregular outline – bigger than himself – directly onto the glassy surface. Corrosive black foam began to bubble as it ate away at the windows’ molecular bonds.

  With the outline finished, Solarion returned the canister to its pouch and gripped the doors’ outer handles.

  Karras was counting in his head. At sixteen, he gave the go.

  Solarion tugged the handles and two large pieces of frame and glass came away in his hands – no shattering, only the slightest sound of breakage.

  The Ultramarine turned and laid the pieces carefully down. Karras moved inside in a half-crouch, bolter raised, stock pressed to shoulder. He heard quiet footfalls behind him as Solarion followed.

  SpACE, thought Karras, sweeping the room.

  The Watch sergeants had drummed it into them since the beginning of day two.

  Spacing, Angles, Corners, Exits.

  This room was clear, but it might not have been. Kulle kept changing enemy dispersal every time he sent them in. He kept changing the sentry patrol patterns, too.

  Beyond the door in the far side lay the north hallway from which he and Solarion would proceed to the objective room. Moving fast, Karras placed himself on the right of the door. Solarion took his place on the left. Each signalled readiness to the other. So far, so good.

  Karras reached out a gloved hand and pressed the access rune. The door slid sideways into its housing. Before it had finished, Karras was already out in the corridor, muzzle covering the left.

  ‘Contact!’

  A ghostly eldar sentry spun and, on seeing Karras, raised the fluted muzzle of its alien pistol.

  Karras’s bolter coughed quietly and the tall, slender alien crumpled, then flickered with greenish static, blurred into lower resolution and disappeared altogether. In the wall behind where it had stood, a small black crater bled thin wisps of smoke. A hololithic projector in the ceiling above buzzed briefly, its indicator light changing from green to red. Karras turned.

  Behind him, Solarion had taken out a similar target.

  ‘Let’s move,’ said Karras, indicating southwards. Together, Karras hugging the left wall and Solarion the right, they stalked off down the now unguarded corridor. As they proceeded closer to the central chamber at the far end, they kept their muzzles level, covering the metal apertures on either side and the corridor junction ahead where the path split east and west. There was no time to clear each side chamber in this high-speed secure-for-extraction exercise.

  The scenario was simple: three high-value Imperial Naval personnel had been taken alive by so-called dark eldar during a xenos assault on an Imperial outpost. The Navy personnel each held critical strategic information, none of which overlapped, meaning all three needed to be recovered alive before they could be broken by cruel xenos torture or mind-manipulation. They were designated Apollon-level assets; the loss of even one during the operation meant a mission failure.

  Kill-block Ophidion didn’t look like any space port Karras had ever seen, of course, but that hardly mattered. A little imagination was often called for during training.

  A metal door on the right slid upwards and a spidery figure emerged: black hair pinned up with small white bones, pointed ears on either side of a long, narrow, olive-skinned face.

  Solarion dropped the target before its shoulders had even cleared the doorway. The image of the dark eldar spun, flickered and rezzed out, giving its simulated cohorts in the room behind it ample warning that they were under attack. Bone-like muzzles suddenly bristled from the doorway. Enemy fire blazed into the hallway. The holo-projected shots whined and buzzed through the air above Karras’s head, given worrying realism by the kill-block’s advanced audio system.

  ‘Blood and blazes!’ he hissed.

  Solarion dropped to a full crouch and fired back, bolts smacking into the doorframe behind which the hostiles hid. These rounds didn’t detonate as bolter-rounds usually did. They were practice bolts,
nicknamed clippers – low-velocity, non-explosive slugs of the type used in kill-block training as standard. Sparks leapt from each harmless impact.

  Multiple roused targets in hard cover, thought Karras bitterly. The run is practically scuppered already. That idiot knows better. Kulle was right about him trying to undermine me.

  Over the link, he heard the others report that they were in position around the target room. Karras couldn’t let them storm that room without either he or Solarion coming in from the north side. He wouldn’t send them in to be cut down knowing that Kulle always kept the hostages heavily guarded. There would be too many foes inside for three operatives to handle without a casualty or two, Space Marines or not.

  Gritting his teeth, he made his decision. He marked the distance to the door from which all the fire was coming, then pulled a smoke grenade from his webbing. Arming it, he tossed it just in front of the enemy. With a hiss, thick grey smoke billowed out, quickly filling the confines of the corridor and much of the side chamber. Visibility dropped to nothing, but Karras had everything he needed in his head. He tugged a frag grenade free and burst into a low run. The aliens were blind-firing now. He did his best to cut a safe path through their simulated barrage. Behind him, Solarion was still firing at the shrouded door, though he could no more see it now than Karras could. At least his fire offered some suppression. Maybe Karras wouldn’t be cut to pieces.

  Or maybe I will, but he has left me no choice.

  Between the smoke and the covering fire, it was enough. As Karras passed the door, he didn’t slow, but he tossed the primed frag grenade inside, and kept running straight through the choking cloud and beyond it. Ahead of him, where the corridors formed a T-junction, the north entrance to the objective room loomed large. He put on a burst of speed. Over the link, he growled, ‘Space Marines, breach in three…’

  His feet pounded the floor. Six metres to go.

  ‘Two…’

  Closer.

  ‘One…’

  Closer.

  ‘Go,’ he barked. Behind him, his grenade detonated. Like the clipper rounds in his bolter, the grenade was a modified training version, packed with only enough explosive to generate a loud noise. Smoke still lingered to hide the results from view, but four projected dark eldar flickered into non-existence and a cluster of indicator lights turned from green to red.

  Karras was already beyond thinking about any of that. All that mattered was the hostage room, the double-doors of which raced towards him. He was supposed to breach them with a small demo charge, but there was no time. Solarion had seen to that. With a grunt, he hurled himself forwards, slamming his left shoulder hard into the centre of the doors.

  There was a great crack as locks and hinge mechanisms ripped from the frame. Like a living juggernaut, Karras exploded through it to the other side, just as his other three team members – Uphreidi, Mannix, and Ansul of the Sons of Sanguinius – stormed the room from south, east and west. Silenced bolters coughed. The dark eldar within had heard the grenade detonate just a fraction of a second before the kill-team burst in – all save Solarion, that is, who was now bringing up the rear. Eight of the cruel-faced xenos had spun towards the doors, raising their strange weapons a moment too late. Clipper rounds whipped through them and they vanished like ghosts. That had been in the first second. In the next, Karras’s team cut down the four remaining foes, all of whom were moving to execute their hostages – three small, nervous-looking men in the starched uniforms and gold brocade of the Admiralty. One of the dark eldar almost succeeded, his black sword about to fall, but there came the sound of a single muffled shot from behind Karras, and the alien disappeared with his vile kin.

  That last kill belonged to Solarion. He stepped into the room and looked around.

  ‘Clear,’ said Brother Mannix.

  ‘Clear,’ echoed each of the others.

  ‘Secure the exits,’ Karras told them. ‘Overwatch on all approaches.’

  The three Naval personnel disappeared now, just like the eldar, fizzling out as if they had never been there at all. Of course, they hadn’t.

  Adrenaline pumping, hearts still hammering in his ears, Karras opened a vox-channel to Watch Sergeant Kulle.

  ‘Alpha here, sergeant. Objectives secured. No casualties. Ready for exfil.’

  ‘What was that in the hallway, Alpha? That was a damned mess. If you hadn’t rammed those doors, we’d be looking at total asset loss.’

  ‘I know, sergeant,’ Karras growled. He glared over at Solarion. The Ultramarine had his back to him, his eyes turned outwards to the corridor he was covering.

  That fool. What’s his issue? I’ll have an explanation, by the Throne.

  ‘What was our time?’

  ‘Better,’ said Kulle. ‘You shaved off three seconds with that death-or-glory run of yours. Still, that’s not how we like to see things done around here.’

  ‘It shouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘No, it should not. But you thought fast. You’ll be remembered for it.’

  ‘I think… What?’

  There was a pause on the other end of the link that Karras didn’t much like, then Kulle said, ‘You’re a dead man, Karras. Right about now, you’d be doubled over on the floor vomiting up what’s left of your dissolving organs. When you rushed the side doorway and dropped that grenade, an enemy round took you in the upper left thigh. The dark eldar use powerful toxins. Some of them are beyond even the Purifier’s[14] abilities. You would have lived long enough to storm the room, but, if this were anything but an exercise, I’d be talking to your Two right now, not to you. Even your progenoids[15] would be lost.’

  Karras stood stunned. His progenoids ruined? So, not only had the surly Ultramarine gotten him killed, he had robbed him of the honour of providing that final genetic legacy to his Chapter. No Space Marine could stomach thoughts of such a death.

  He thundered over to where Solarion stood and spun him violently around. Placing a big hand on the Ultramarine’s throat, Karras slammed him against the doorframe and drove him up into the air, his back pressed hard against it.

  Solarion reacted at once, throwing a blistering left hook at Karras’s temple. But Karras still had a free hand. He raised his elbow and redirected the blow.

  ‘If you ever do anything like that again, you piece of–’

  Solarion brought his knees up fast and used them to lever Karras back. Overextended, Karras had to let the Ultramarine drop. Solarion landed in stance, ready to defend himself.

  ‘Ever do what, witchblood?’ he spat.

  ‘You know damned well,’ said Karras, eyes blazing at the slur.

  Solarion’s snarl became a sneer. ‘I told them you weren’t equal to this. The Death Spectres? What great part have you played in history? A third-tier Chapter stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Your home world isn’t even within the bounds of the Imperium. And they put you in charge of me?’

  Eyes still on Karras, he bent and retrieved his fallen bolter.

  ‘I was called to Damaroth because I’m the best,’ insisted Solarion, his conviction absolute. ‘The Ultramarine before me was a kill-team leader, and the one before him. I’ll not be subordinate to the likes of you.’

  ‘I didn’t make that decision,’ Karras threw back.

  ‘But it suits you well enough.’

  Karras felt something stir that he had thought locked away. His rage must have broken through somehow, momentarily pushing him beyond the limiting power of the warp field suppressor on his spine.

  His gift flared like a struck match, not the blaze it should have been, not even close to the eldritch strength he had known before, but it was there, enough to feel, enough to lash out with before he could restrain himself.

  Balefire licked upwards from his eyes. The space around him pulsed.

  Solarion was lifted into the air by powerful invisible hands and hurled against the far wall. He crashed into it with a grunt, then dropped hard to the floor. He righted himself quickly and stood glar
ing across the room at Karras. A strange smile spread his lips. ‘And now you’ve struck me,’ he said with icy calm.

  Karras felt an immediate rush of shame. This was not how things should be. He knew the glory of the Ultramarines. He would never, could never, have imagined attacking one like this.

  What has gotten into me? Where is my self-control? Is my anger due to the insult, or to the sealing of my power? I had not thought my equilibrium so dependent on it. They were right to seal it away. I see now that my dependence is a weakness I must overcome.

  There was blood on Solarion’s lip. He wiped it off with the back of his hand. The other three Space Marines stood in tense silence, unsure whether to step in or not. They had all heard it; Karras’s honour had been insulted beyond reasonable tolerance, even to the most lenient among them. But the Ultramarines were greatly respected. For the most part, at least, they were paragons of what it meant to be a Space Marine.

  Karras heard Kulle lambasting them over the link.

  ‘Stand down, both of you! Do not force me to use the neural interrupt. Codicier Karras, I want to see you down here now.’ He paused before adding, ‘You’re not supposed to be able to do that.’

  Karras briefly considered apologising to Solarion, but the fool had insulted his Chapter. The psychic assault had been wrong, but the Ultramarine’s ignorant words were no less so. Instead, he said nothing and strode from the room. There was a staircase to the left, down the west corridor, that led to the front exit on the ground level. He took this and, as he walked down the steps, he heard Kulle addressing him again, this time on a closed channel. ‘They told me the suppression field was set to maximum. What did you do?’

  ‘He went too far,’ said Karras, voice flat now.

  ‘It happens. But overloading the implant… That does not.’

  Karras couldn’t find it in himself to care about the implant and the expectations the Watch Council placed on it. His power had overridden it only briefly, just long enough to make a bad situation worse. It had subsided now. He tried to call it up again, to create a ball of balefire in his hand, but the implant blocked him as before. It was fury that had overcome it, not will or need. Just rage, plain and simple.