Deathwatch

by Steve Parker

  After physical training, usually lasting five to six hours per cycle, the trainees were given individual programmes of Librarius study. The Damaroth Archive had the distinction of being one of the top two repositories for xenos-related material in the entire segmentum, the other being located at the local Ordo Xenos headquarters on Talasa Prime. But this period of study contained far more than simple book-learning. The Deathwatch Librarius had at its disposal an incredible archive of sensorium recordings taken from human-xenos conflicts across the Imperium. Some of these dated back to the very earliest days of the Deathwatch, back to when the Imperium was still groggily pushing itself to its feet after the treachery of Horus and his faithless cohorts, and the enshrinement of the Emperor upon the Golden Throne.

  The sensorium records – the very same resource used for punishment – provided a level of education that was unmatched. Seated in stone chairs with psychostim helms on their heads, Karras and the others would relive hellish battles through the senses of Space Marines long gone. As with the Penance Box, they could not influence these recordings. The battlefields they walked had gone quiet long ago. They were observers only, but the bloodshed that unfolded all around them was heart-stoppingly vivid – the sights, the smells, the sounds, everything.

  They saw through the eyes of a stoic Black Templar as he and his brothers were finally gunned down by tau battlesuits on a desert salt pan beneath triple suns. Had they executed a fighting retreat they might just have survived. Pride made them stand their ground and the price was their lives. The lesson, though fatal to those who taught it, was not wasted.

  In other recordings, they lived through the final moments of a tyranid assault on a missile defence base at a classified location somewhere in Ultramar. The forces of the Ultramarines Fourth Company held on as long as they could for air support that never came. Karras winced as a pair of huge, slavering jaws closed over the legs of the Space Marine through whose senses he was experiencing the dreadful rout. The Ultramarine had been bitten in half at the waist and swallowed in two twitching pieces. Throne alone knew how anyone had recovered his helmet and the data crystal it contained.

  They witnessed, too, the lethally methodical advance of the deadly necrons. Those skeletal figures of black metal bone seemed to press forwards almost lazily. They never charged at speed – so utterly sure of victory, of the irresistible force they represented. Time and again, it seemed the Space Wolves that fought them were making progress, only for the thin black bodies on the ground to rise up and take arms again, corpses called endlessly back to life. Nothing would avail the Space Wolves. They fell back, dying as they gave ground.

  All this and more, Karras and the others lived through, feeling the pain and loss of those whose experiences they distantly relived. These were some of the hardest sessions for Karras, for he could do nothing to help the brave Space Marines. He felt fresh pity for those brothers, such as Iddecai, forced to experience the loss of their Chapter brothers in a Penance Box. These were battles lost to time, and yet, through the sensorium feeds, they seemed as real and as tangible as the stone armrests beneath his straining, white-knuckled hands. Often after such a session, despite none of them originating with his own noble order, he would rise from the stone chair riddled with grief, blazing with anger, fists clenched, desperately seeking an enemy to kill in revenge for what he had seen. He was far from alone in this. These sessions were harrowing in the extreme. Though the Watch Council made sure to filter the experiences by Chapter, ensuring that only the perpetrators of misdemeanours witnessed the loss of their kin, still many cried out in raw anguish and struggled against the titanium bindings that kept them restrained. It mattered not that the dying wore different colours, different iconography, and spoke with accents unfamiliar. The effect was powerful all the same.

  The Watch Librarians, Lochaine foremost among them, insisted it was necessary. No one was exempt; not by Chapter, not by rank. The sessions became hated, for they represented all that was worst about defeat: the loss of great heroes, the helplessness, the grief, anger and guilt.

  Despite all this distress, Karras quickly came to see the value of these feeds. No one could deny the effects. Seeing how each xenos breed fought first-hand was absolutely invaluable. Karras vicariously looked straight into the alien eyes of several threat-species he had never even heard of. He learned how they moved, how they struck, the weapons they wielded. But it went beyond that. Something else happened that was, perhaps, more significant still.

  Despite their differences, the Space Marines started to come together.

  Like several others, Karras was, at one point, even compelled to approach Solarion. He did this after enduring the horrific feed from the Ultramarines Fourth Company.

  ‘Do not speak,’ he told Solarion, cornering him in the Refectorum. ‘I need no response. I wish only to tell you this: your brothers fought like gods of war. The sacrifice of those that fell is a testament to the glory of your Chapter. My brothers and I would have been proud to fight beside them.’

  That was it. He turned and left immediately, still moved by what he had seen, not wishing to give the Ultramarine a chance to sour the sentiment.

  Typically, after two or three hours of archival and sensorium study, the Space Marines would once again return to the main chapel to give thanks for all they had learned. Many who had stood in that same gloomy echoing space only eight hours earlier returned bearing fresh injuries of varying severity. The training was extreme because Deathwatch operations, by their very nature, were extreme. Yet no deaths occurred. There had not been a Space Marine death on Damaroth for over a century, for the Watch could ill afford to lose even a single battle-brother seconded to its ranks. This did not mean, however, that it could not push them to the very edge. Often, the Rothi would filter silently into the chapel after the post-training litanies were complete to clean congealed blood from the smooth marble flagstones.

  After these litanies, the Space Marines would move to the Refectorum where, once per ten-hour cycle, they would consume a bowl of nutrient-dense gruel or, if they wished to eat alone, could acquire a meal-replacement block and return with it to their cells. These meal-replacements were affectionately known as bricks, and the name was well earned. They were the length and width of a typical Space Marine’s index finger, coloured like sandstone and grooved deeply so that they could be broken into three smaller chunks. They were textured like sandstone, too – rough, gritty and requiring significant pressure from the jaw muscles to break them down.

  At first, Karras took his with iced water, eating back in the silence of his sparse quarters. After the first dozen cycles, however, he decided he was missing a unique opportunity and began to eat regularly in the Refectorum among his fellows. It did not serve anyone, he told himself, to hide away in solitude. A kill-team was a team. He would live and die by the honour and skill of the Space Marines who served beside him. With that in mind, he made efforts to get to know those around him, at the very least by sight. Mostly, he just observed them, for few seemed willing to approach. Librarians often found themselves segregated, even within their own Chapters, for the feelings their powers generated in their Chapter brothers were conflicting in nature.

  Tolerate not the psyker, the witch, the shaman. Their power is the gateway to madness and corruption.

  And yet, were Librarians not the supreme embodiment of anti-xenos war: soldiers whose physical talents were matched only by their psychic weaponry? Most alien species represented a threat on both counts. Only the psyker was capable of combating the latter aspect effectively.

  Seated in the Refectorum cycle after cycle with the stone benches empty on either side of him, it was apparent to Karras that, in their discomfort at his presence, these elite battle-brothers were not so different from many others he had known, and he took to reading ancient texts from the Watch Librarius to distract himself from their prejudice as he ate.

  But there were exceptions. During one such meal, with the Refectorum at only a thi
rd of its capacity, he met for the first time the most unusual and irreverent Space Marine he had ever encountered.

  ‘The one that bloodied Prophet’s lip,’ said the figure that suddenly appeared in front of him.

  Karras looked up from his gruel and across the stone table. Before him stood a striking battle-brother in a black tunic belted with silver. In his hands, he held a clay bowl and spoon like those on the table in front of Karras.

  ‘Prophet?’ Karras asked, confused.

  ‘The Ultramarine you threw into a wall.’

  ‘Ignacio Solarion,’ said Karras. His brow creased. ‘Do you seek to shame me with such a reminder? Very well. I admit I was wrong to lose my composure. What is that to you?’

  The stranger, ignoring the warning tone, asked if he might sit. Despite his misgivings, Karras gestured to the bench on the other side of the table. The other Space Marine dropped onto it, smiling to himself. His skin was as white as sun-bleached bone, exactly the shade of Karras’s own. The similarities stopped there, however. While Karras’s eyes were blood red, even where they should have been white, this battle-brother’s eyes were a solid, flawless black, like two spheres of pure polished obsidian. They were the same black as his long shimmering hair – hair that lay like a silk mantle on his shoulders. Karras was as bald as a knarloc egg. It was genetic. All Death Spectres went bald during the gene-seed implant process.

  Damned impractical, thought Karras, staring at all that long, shining hair. What vanity! And look at that face. Not a single scar. Surely this one has never been tested. Surely he is too young and inexperienced to be here.

  It was a remarkable face for more than just its lack of scars, and for more than the rare friendliness apparent in its expression, too. The unblemished face stared back at Karras with an apparent openness the Death Spectre had seen nowhere else since his arrival.

  Something familiar, Karras thought. Like Ithoric’s White Champion. Or Gorlon Xie’s Olympiarch.

  Karras was no stranger to the works of the Great Sculptors. For ten thousand years, the worlds of the Imperium had produced a few men each generation in whose hands simple stone became works of such beauty and perfection that they inspired the populations of whole segmenta. Most of these men were eventually commissioned to produce inspirational military works for the Adeptus Munitorum, as much to boost morale as to immortalise the noteworthy. The glorious diorama of Macharius and Sejanus on Ultima Macharia – the famous End of the Long March – was one such example, much imitated in the years following its unveiling, but never bettered.

  The face of the Space Marine sitting opposite Karras now was more suited to such a sculpture than to a trained killer or living war-machine. Silky black hair framed a forehead of respectable height, a noble brow, a sharp slender nose and a mouth neither too wide nor too small. The planes of the cheekbones were smooth and superbly proportioned. Such symmetry there. Were it not for the all-black eyes, Karras could almost have believed this brother a masterpiece of statuary come to life.

  The stranger noted Karras studying him and laughed.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Too good-looking for the Deathwatch. But don’t let that fool you.’

  Karras raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Don’t mistake this perfection for a badge of inexperience. You were thinking that very thing. Not so?’

  ‘You have the Gift yourself, then,’ said Karras with some humour, ‘to read others so well.’

  ‘I’m gifted all right, but not in the way you mean. I’ll leave sorcery to the likes of you, witchkin.’ Karras stiffened at the word, but detected no malice in the tone. ‘I’m just used to dealing with false assumptions,’ the stranger went on.

  ‘The only Space Marines I’ve seen without a scar on their faces are neophytes,’ countered Karras. ‘It doesn’t last long.’

  ‘That should tell you something,’ said the battle-brother.

  ‘It would tell me that you’re a neophyte,’ said Karras, ‘but the Deathwatch does not recruit neophytes.’

  The black-haired battle-brother shovelled a spoonful of thick, sludgy gruel into his mouth.

  ‘You’d think they could add some flavour to the damned stuff,’ he groaned. Then, after another swallow, added, ‘We share blood, you and I.’

  Karras nodded. The colourless skin was the giveaway. Gene-seed mutation. Another reason certain others kept their distance. ‘It would seem so. Raptors, perhaps? Revilers?’

  The other tutted. ‘Now why would you think that? Raven Guard, I’ll have you know.’

  Karras cursed. Given the stranger’s breezy manner, how could he possibly have guessed it? He dropped his spoon in his bowl and stood. Dutifully, and in accordance with ancient tradition, he raised right hand to left pectoral, bowed his head, and intoned gravely, ‘We look to Corax and pray for his return. We of the Death Spectres honour the seed that made us.’

  The Raven Guard’s smile weakened for a moment. He gestured for Karras to sit. A few others in the Refectorum looked over.

  ‘We honour the brothers born of our roots,’ he replied. ‘May Corax take pride in them and all they do.’ It was appropriate in response but not so much in the way it was said. ‘Relax, brother. I don’t stand much on formality. You’ve obeyed the forms. Let us put them aside where they belong. How old are you, by the way?’

  He spooned another mouthful of gruel into his mouth.

  Karras sat stunned. What manner of Raven Guard was this?

  ‘Why did you approach me?’ he asked, ignoring the other’s question.

  ‘Why not? You were eating alone. Not being shunned, are you?’ He looked around almost theatrically, pretending to fear that anyone might see them together. ‘Actually, I just wanted to meet the Space Marine who overloaded his implant and bloodied Prophet’s nose. He had it coming. If not from you…’

  ‘You keep calling him Prophet,’ said Karras. ‘I don’t understand.’

  The Raven Guard snorted. ‘He makes more predictions than a back-alley palm-reader. You’re making an error. This strategy will fail. I told you so. Exactly as I foresaw. If you had listened to me…

  ‘Ah,’ said Karras. ‘I’m sure he is delighted with the name.’

  ‘Revels in it,’ said the Raven Guard with obvious pleasure.

  ‘And do I have a nickname?’ asked Karras.

  The Raven Guard indicated the weathered old volume Karras had lain aside while they talked. ‘I’ve taken to calling you Scholar,’ he said. ‘A little obvious, I admit.’

  ‘Perhaps, but at least I won’t take offence.’

  ‘I should have tried harder,’ said the Raven Guard, flashing perfect teeth.

  He half turned and pointed out a number of others in the Refectorum, quoting their nicknames to Karras. Some were obscure and needed explanation, just as Prophet’s had, but others were simple, some bordering on the openly offensive, others given in respect of a particular talent or skill. Of these latter, the last that Karras learned was the nickname of a squat, bulky battle-brother of the Imperial Fists. He was sitting in the far corner with a Black Templar.

  ‘Omni,’ said the Raven Guard.

  ‘Why that?’

  ‘You haven’t trained with him yet? About the only thing he can’t do is fit into narrow spaces.’ At this, he laughed. ‘Heavy weapons, explosives, communications, vehicles, repairs, encryption. I guess he’s making up for being so damned short. It looks like his body grew outwards rather than upwards, doesn’t it?’

  ‘There’s one name you haven’t told me,’ said Karras, leaning forwards, eyebrow raised.

  The Raven Guard made a short bow from his seat.

  ‘My name is Zeed, brother. Siefer Zeed.’

  Karras extended his hand and they briefly gripped wrists.

  ‘Well met, Brother Zeed, but don’t pretend you haven’t earned a nickname yourself. Or are you somehow excluded?’

  Zeed had apparently decided he was finished with his gruel. He rose from the stone bench and stepped backwards over it, still facing
Karras. He left his bowl on the table.

  ‘They call me Ghost,’ he said.

  It was Karras’s turn to laugh. ‘And why do they call you that I wonder? As well to call me the same, given the skin colour we share.’

  ‘It’s not that, Scholar,’ said Zeed, strangely serious all of a sudden. ‘Not at all.’

  He turned to leave, but paused a moment and spoke over his shoulder.

  ‘Watch for me in the combat pits if you have the chance. See me fight. You’ll see why they call me Ghost… and why this face bears no scars.’

  With that, he strode off, leaving Karras to wonder at the strange encounter. Zeed stopped at a few other tables on his way out, greeting battle-brothers from various Chapters, always with a quip or remark. Some shared his good humour. A White Scar by the name of Brother Khaigur particularly enjoyed whatever it was that Zeed said to him, laughing uproariously and pounding the table with big calloused hands. Others merely glared until Zeed moved away. Of those who showed little patience with him, surliest of all was the Ultramarine, Ignacio Solarion. Prophet. Karras hadn’t noticed him enter the Refectorum. It must have been within the last few minutes. He was seated at a far table beside a small group of Space Marines from progenitor Chapters. Karras saw warriors from the Novamarines and the Sons of Orar among them.

  Whatever it was that Zeed said to Solarion, it was clearly far from politic. Solarion snarled aggressively and made to rise, but the Novamarine seated next to him said something back and the Raven Guard shrugged and moved off. Solarion then turned his glare towards Karras, a look that was difficult to read.

  If not for this damned implant…

  Karras opted not to return the look. Would that he could undo the whole mess.

  We should reserve our hate for the xenos, he thought. Not for each other. Among those who share a sacred duty to mankind, it should never be so.

  He left the Refectorum with half an hour to spare before the beginning of the next cycle. He would sleep for fifteen minutes, he decided. Even so short a rest would allow him to begin the next cycle rejuvenated and ready, his fatigue falling away, minor tissue damage naturally mending. Such was the enhanced constitution of a Space Marine.