Deathwatch

by Steve Parker

Now he got it.

  Solarion’s breastplate screeched in protest as a talon raked it, tearing a great, jagged rent across its embossed honour-markings and Deathwatch iconography. Warning glyphs flickered to red life, his visor projecting them directly onto his left retina.

  ARMOUR INTEGRITY COMPROMISED

  The offending creature, hissing and spitting savagely as it readied itself for a killing lunge, suddenly choked out a wet cry and fell to the ground in two pieces separated at the waist. Behind it, the Raven Guard was already moving away, engaging another knot of xenos abominations, bolter blazing, firing one-handed as he gripped his combat knife in his other.

  Solarion added his own gunfire, cutting down three large genestealers that were trying to flank Maximmion Voss from the right.

  The chitin-covered cavern walls strobed with muzzle flashes. Genestealers were crawling all over them, climbing out from holes between faintly glowing cysts that were swollen close to bursting with embryonic alien forms. Quivering sacks of flesh lay pale pink and glistening wherever there was a corner or crevice. Wall-veins and ribbed umbilici, as white as the eyes of a blindfish, pumped nutrient-thick fluids to clusters of queer eggs that hung from between the stalactites above. Occasionally, a stray bolt would rupture them, and a rain of thick, smelly fluids would fall to the ground. It hardly mattered if it rained on the Space Marines. Their armour was already awash with gore.

  The genestealers poured out towards them in numbers seemingly without end. The broodlord’s earlier probing attack had convinced it of the threat these armoured intruders represented to its nurseries, to the swelling of its forces and its eventual domination of the planet. It was time to remove that threat.

  Even as Solarion revelled in the bloodbath, he recognised that he and his two irreverent Deathwatch brothers could not stand for long against numbers like these. They fought for the sake of Karras and Rauth, but he was less than willing to die for them.

  Come on, Death Spectre. Retrieve the woman and get moving so we can pull out of here.

  He knew he carried too few rounds to last much longer if the genestealer assault maintained its intensity. Voss was wielding his flamer again, gloriously effective against enemy ranks so dense, and the Imperial Fist was taking an impressive toll on the foe, but sooner or later, his weapon would run dry and there would be no more canisters of promethium to fuel it. Not until they returned to RP3.

  If we ever get that chance.

  ‘More contacts,’ shouted the Raven Guard. ‘Front right, high.’

  Solarion looked up. Another wave of hissing, six-limbed forms poured into the nursery chamber from a quivering, fleshy orifice in the ceiling, an obscene sight.

  Zeed’s bolter barked out a greeting, and four of them fell with shots neatly placed in their brains and breasts. Solarion added three swift kills of his own to his tally. But not all of the genestealers could be killed at a safe distance. There were simply too many for that, and they moved so fast. Even Zeed, supreme at close quarters, would meet his death if the fighting went hand-to-hand. Against one or two at a time, he might just hold his own, but not against more than that.

  How much longer, Karras? thought Solarion bitterly. In Guilliman’s name, how much longer?

  If he, Zeed and Voss could only manage to break away from the fight in the next few moments, then maybe, if the Emperor was with them, they might just live to see the end of this damned fools’ errand.

  He tried not to wonder if the prize was worth his life, nor to wonder how, if they didn’t make it back, Sigma would report their increasingly inevitable deaths to their respective Chapters.

  13

  ‘In Terra’s holy name,’ groaned Karras. ‘I knew, but to see it with one’s own eyes…’

  He and Rauth had entered a chamber of grotesque horrors, the sight of which, he knew, would stay with him forever, a reminder of reality’s darkest, cruellest face. It was the birthing chamber in which the primary objective awaited them. White Phoenix ought to be here, not just because the locatrix said so, but because this chamber was different from any other they had come across in a single, crucial way:

  Women! Dozens of them. They have become a part of the nest, incorporated into it by their captors. Such a gruesome fate.

  Karras wanted to turn away, sickened and infuriated.

  More than half of the women were fixed to the strange organic walls of the chamber by a mix of dark chitin plates and thick strands of a sticky substance like some kind of tough mucus. The others were half enclosed in equally disgusting organic mounds dotted about the cavern floor. Pools of pungent yellow-brown liquid bubbled and steamed near them. Ropes of semi-translucent flesh fed or withdrew fluids from their bodies, snaking into their noses and mouths. Gratefully, Karras saw that the women’s lower bodies were fully encased, though their grossly distended bellies were exposed to the hot, humid air. He had no doubt there were similar organic catheters beneath the chitin, responsible for Throne-knew-what. Those bellies were so stretched by the xenos organisms growing within that the skin had become as translucent as the looping coils of strange umbilici. In some, the Death Spectre could see jostling clusters of embryonic aliens vying with each other for the most comfortable positions. The women playing host to these slithering forms wept and whimpered in an agony that pierced their mindless stupor.

  Rauth was murmuring some litany that only those from the Basilica Malefix on Banish could possibly comprehend. His fists were clenched so tight that he had lost feeling in both hands.

  ‘And I saw the true face of darkness behind that veil, and it did blind me with its horror,’ quoted Karras numbly.

  Rauth looked over at him. ‘Uxol Thay’s Necrisod.’

  ‘Volume three. His visions of the sixth hell.’

  Rauth moved forwards, mag-locking his bolter and drawing his combat blade. ‘We should not let them suffer like this.’

  Karras halted him with a hand on his right pauldron, palm pressed to the horned-skull icon there. ‘Agreed, and we shall end their misery, but we have a mission to complete, and our brothers are fighting for their lives so we can do just that. We will release them from their suffering after we extricate White Phoenix. Not before. The mission has ultimate priority here. We may be beset at any time.’

  Rauth nodded once and brushed off Karras’s hand. He kept his blade ready in his own.

  Karras checked his retinal display and found what he was looking for.

  His battle-helm’s subsystems had locked on to the source of a repeating electronic life-signal. A small, red, triangular reticule appeared, marking the precise location of the opticom they had been moving towards all this time. Karras blink-clicked the reticule off and saw a wretched figure lying bound to a pulsing organic structure. It looked part-altar, part-incubator, and on it was White Phoenix, the primary objective.

  ‘That’s her,’ he said pointing, and strode over to her side.

  Looking down at her, he saw deep scratches, crusted thick with blood, on her arms, face, neck and chest.

  She fought them.

  It hadn’t made any difference, but at least she had tried. He turned his eyes to her abdomen and saw that it was horribly distended. She was pregnant like the others, her belly stretched taut with early signs of the chitinous armour which the creature within was already forming. It would emerge ready to protect itself.

  That emergence would be no quiet, slithering escape, either. It would rip and tear its way out, bursting forth in a tide of its dying host’s blood. Not one of these women would survive the birthing process. The creatures, when ready, would erupt through their flesh, then turn on their mothers and feed on them until nothing was left, not even the teeth, hair and bones.

  Eat. Absorb. Incorporate. Spread.

  So it went, the tyranid life cycle. It was a thing of absolute simplicity, but the halting of it, the stemming of that tide, was anything but simple. Countless brothers had already fallen in the attempt: Ultramarines at Macragge, Blood Angels and Angels Vermillion at Ho
llonan, Brother Chyron’s own Lamenters at Devlan and Malvolion, and so many more. Many yet would fall, and with no clear hope in sight.

  Karras locked his bolter to his cuisse and, leaning forwards, tugged hard at the foul, sticky mass restraining White Phoenix. First, he worked to free her head and neck. With a cracking sound, a handful of chitinous matter came away trailing wet strands and tangles of what looked like human hair. It was the woman’s hair. As he pulled more of her bonds away, more hair came with it, falling out so easily. All her nutrients were being leeched away by the alien inside her. Karras paused, wondering if removing her from this abominable apparatus might kill her. She seemed so pale and thin. He had never seen her before, so he could not know that men of great power and influence had once coveted her. She had been an example of superb human genetics once. Now, she was little more than skin and bone. And yet, Sigma would have her returned. He had sent Talon Squad down into the depths of this dark, filth-ridden hellhole to get her back.

  Again, he questioned the true motives behind this operation. Just what was her strategic importance to the Ordo Xenos? Well, it hardly mattered for now. Here she was, and it was his job to get her out, whatever Sigma’s motives might be.

  As he pulled away more of the biomass from her body, he hoped his squad brothers were still alive. Talon was his kill-team. They were his operatives. He was responsible for their survival. But, as tempted as he was to send his astral self out to check on them, he would risk alerting the broodlord to his location. Not yet. It was too early. He just had to trust in their skill and hope they would rendezvous with he and Rauth as planned.

  Suddenly, the woman’s eyelids fluttered open, surprising Karras and causing him to freeze. She turned her head slowly to regard him.

  ‘She’s conscious,’ he whispered to Rauth over the link.

  The Exorcist, who had been covering the exits while Karras had been busy pulling her out, came closer and leaned in to snatch a brief look.

  One of the woman’s eyes was completely bloodshot. The other was a gunmetal-grey orb with a glowing red lens for a pupil. ‘Space… Marines…,’ she murmured.

  ‘Yes,’ answered Karras. ‘Deathwatch.’ Against her barely audible voice, he was all too aware of the grating sharpness of his own, modulated as it was through his helmet’s vocaliser. Without knowing quite why he did it, he reached up and removed his helm.

  His face was too harsh to be called handsome, criss-crossed as it was with scar tissue and old burns, as pale as snow and with blood-red eyes. But it was a more human face than she had seen in all too long. More than that, it was a Space Marine face, the face of a warrior, the face of her salvation. The woman smiled up at it weakly.

  ‘Kill us all,’ she said. ‘Don’t let us be… be used like this.’

  ‘I was not sent to kill you,’ said Karras. ‘I was sent to get you out.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘No,’ she told him. ‘It was not me he sent you to recover.’

  She knows it is Sigma who holds our leash.

  He replaced his helmet and addressed Rauth, using the link so she would not hear. ‘She wishes death. Would that I could grant it.’

  ‘She is not likely to survive the extraction,’ Rauth returned. ‘Look at her. Death will come soon enough. Your hand need not hasten it.’

  ‘She believes it is the unborn beast Sigma wants, not her. But he was adamant we try to extract her alive.’

  ‘Then she is mistaken about his interests. Regardless, we should make haste.’

  ‘I will carry her,’ said Karras. ‘You take point.’

  ‘Very well. But first I shall set the others free.’

  They looked again at the walls and grotesque mounds, and at the pitiful creatures trapped there.

  ‘Mankind must wipe out this tyranid cancer,’ snarled Karras. ‘Surely no other xenos race is as worthy of our hatred and rage.’

  Rauth raised his knife.

  ‘No,’ said Karras. ‘There is not enough time to kill them that way. We will move to the exit and use our grenade launchers. Inferno rounds. We will burn everything to ash.’

  So they did, and granted all the Emperor’s mercy.

  14

  Something happened, a sudden change that rippled across the enemy ranks. The genestealers froze in their attack and turned their heads to the north, as if hearing something the three blood-spattered Space Marines could not. Those nearest to passageways and tunnel mouths vanished into them, like great cockroaches scuttling for shadow, but the genestealers closest to the Deathwatch operatives resumed their attack, their targets too close to turn from, still intent on slaying the power-armoured intruders.

  Even as he cored the torso of the closest with a triple burst of explosive bolts, Solarion called out over the link to the others. ‘That’s it. That must be it. They’ve got her!’

  The others made no response, their minds lost in the joys of the killing.

  Voss was closest. He had switched to his bolt pistol and knife. The flamer was down to half a canister. With the enemy ranks less dense, he didn’t want to waste it. Solarion stormed over to him and gripped the edge of his pauldron. He tried to turn him, but it was no easy task. As well to try and turn Chyron. ‘Time to fall back, brother. We must rendezvous with them at RP3. They will need our strength.’

  Until the broodlord’s silent psychic call, the fighting hadn’t eased off for an instant. Checking his chrono, it was hard for the Ultramarine to believe just how briefly he and his fellows had been here. Adrenaline and battle-focus did strange things to one’s experience of time. The peak of the genestealer onslaught had lasted only minutes, but it felt a lot longer than that.

  No further waves of tyranid organisms were emerging into the chamber now, and those that remained were thinning rapidly in number, cut down by Zeed, who continued to ignore the Ultramarine’s calls to pull out.

  Lifeless bodies lay where they had fallen, piled together in slick, wet, steaming heaps. Perhaps a dozen live threats remained. A dozen genestealers, still more than enough to kill them all if they got within striking distance.

  One dropped from the ceiling, landing with a clatter of chitin behind Voss and Solarion. Long arms flashed out towards the Imperial fist, but the sound of its landing had given the Ultramarine just enough time to turn. He emptied the last three bolts in his mag, blowing big holes in the creature’s torso and head, then dumped his empty clip and slid home another.

  My second last.

  Voss turned to see the creature dead on the cavern floor.

  ‘Thanks, Prophet.’

  ‘Thank me by getting your oversized backside out of here. And stop calling me Prophet.’

  They turned to call on Zeed and found the cavern suddenly empty.

  ‘For Throne’s sake,’ raged Solarion. ‘Where in the blasted warp is that idiot?’

  He tried the link again and again, voice rising to a shout.

  ‘Get back here Raven Guard. Get back here now, curse you!’

  A black figure emerged from one of the far tunnels at a run.

  ‘Let’s move,’ said Zeed, voice unusually flat. He didn’t stop. He ran straight past them and out of the chamber. Voss and Solarion broke into a run behind him.

  ‘What happened, Ghost?’ asked Voss. ‘What did you see? Is something in pursuit?’

  The Raven Guard was being uncharacteristically tight-lipped.

  ‘No,’ he told them. ‘We need to regroup with the others. I have to speak to Scholar.’

  Solarion snorted doubtfully. Voss threw Zeed a curious look. But whatever was bothering Siefer Zeed, he would say no more about it, so they ran in wordless silence, hoping they wouldn’t be too late to help the others.

  The woman in Karras’s arms was bleeding from all the places where they had tugged out tyranid umbilici. Every juddering step Karras took seemed to wrack her with fresh pain, but he couldn’t stop. Not now. Not with death breathing down his neck. So he ran, and Darrion Rauth ran with him.

  Behind them,
genestealers filled the tunnels, screeching and chittering as they raced after their prey.

  ‘Keep going,’ shouted Karras. ‘RP3 is not far now.’

  Intermittently, Rauth would turn and fire a burst of deadly bolts back at their pursuers, but his ammunition supply was getting dangerously low. Since the horde had diverted towards them, he had downed scores of genestealers. But it never seemed to make a difference. There were always more emerging from the walls and ceiling, skittering out from every hole they passed. Karras couldn’t turn his own weapons on them, not with the frail woman in his arms. He wrestled with a near overwhelming desire to put her down, unsheathe Arquemann from his shoulder, and face the foe. Space Marines did not run.

  Suffer not the alien to live.

  It was the motto of the Deathwatch, but did the urge behind it belong to him, or to the spirit of the force sword? He could feel the blade’s lust for battle. It resonated, like the deep throbbing and pulsing of the air inside an enginarium.

  Karras broke from the end of the tunnel and emerged into the junction where he had earlier split the kill-team into two groups. He kept running, Rauth just behind him, boots pounding on the cavern’s stone floor. Just as Karras and Rauth were crossing the centre of the tunnel intersection, three shapes careened out of a passage on the left, moving so fast that they almost collided with the kill-team leader. Karras swerved right, trying to shield the woman, and raised the bolt pistol in his right hand. Bolter muzzles whipped upwards to take aim, but recognition came at that very instant. It was Solarion, Voss and Zeed, their armour scored and gouged in a dozen places from the battle in the birthing chamber.

  For a split second, the kill-team operatives halted and blinked at each other, stunned by the fact that they were all still alive. Then Karras yelled at them over the link.

  ‘Don’t stop now. Keep moving!’

  United once more, Talon Squad bolted from the junction, thundering up the tunnel to RP3 just as the genestealers emerged behind them. As they ran, Rauth dropped back behind Voss, taking the rear. Still running, he plucked two grenades from his combat webbing, primed the first, and dropped it.