Deathwatch

by Steve Parker

  ‘No good.’

  If he could just get some kind of grip…

  They heard Karras approaching fast before he burst into view, Arquemann still in hand, the blade still glowing from the psychic charge it had built up. It bathed the end of the tunnel in chill, white light.

  ‘Is it done?’ asked Rauth.

  Karras nodded as he walked up to Voss’s side, eyes on the door.

  ‘It’s done. The broodlord has fallen. But it won’t count for anything if we can’t get back to the exfil point in the next twelve minutes. Check your chronos.’

  ‘I can’t open it, Scholar,’ said Voss. ‘Not without some kind of handhold.’

  ‘Stand back,’ Karras told the others. ‘Don’t let the blade touch you.’

  They stepped away as Karras lifted the force sword above his head and made four diagonal slashes in the metal. Two heavy chunks fell away, and Voss had his handholds at last. They weren’t much, but they might just be enough.

  ‘Let’s see what you’ve got, Omni,’ said Karras, stepping clear.

  The Imperial Fist rolled his massive shoulders and stepped in. He pressed his fingers into the space Karras’s blade had carved and began to pull the doors sideways.

  At first, nothing happened. He threw more power into it, the servos in his armour grinding in complaint. Every muscle in his back strained near to tearing. He roared and raged, and finally a space began to appear, finger-wide at first, then wider, wider, until it was the width of his helm.

  Suddenly, something black flashed out from the gap and raked his breastplate, sending out a flash of sparks. Voss fell backwards just as it swiped again. The others looked down at him and saw the two ragged tears on his breastplate.

  ‘Genestealers!’ shouted Zeed.

  Rauth stepped in and pointed his gun muzzle through the gap. He fired a triple burst. There was an alien scream and the sound of frenzied movement.

  Lots of movement.

  Voss was on his feet again. ‘Stand aside,’ he told Rauth. His flamer was already in his hand, the blue igniter hissing in angry anticipation. He pushed the nozzle to the gap and loosed a blinding burst of white fire into the chamber beyond the door. The screams of burning xenos reached their ears.

  ‘There are many,’ said Karras. ‘Talon, we have to get through here. There’s no other way to the Inorin shaft from this side. We have less than ten minutes, brothers. We have to go straight through them.’

  ‘Grenades,’ said Voss. ‘We roll everything we have through there, make some room, and sprint for the far side.’

  ‘Approved,’ said Karras, ‘and Solarion, you’ll crack a flare as soon as we’re in. I want as much light as we can get. Rauth, take the woman and stay between the four of us. We move as a unit. Standard close-protection diamond pattern. Keep the woman safe, but do not fall behind. Cover your fire-sectors. Solarion takes front. Zeed covers the left. Voss, you’ll take the rear. I’ll take the right side. Keep it tight. Once we reach the tunnel mouth on the far side, move as fast as you can. Zeed, you and Solarion will move to the exfil point with Rauth. Rendezvous with Chyron and fire that damned signal round. We have to let Reaper flight know we’re still in this. Voss, you’ll hang back with me. Between us, we might be able to buy some time. I don’t want to extract under assault.’

  ‘I’m with you, Scholar. What about the cache on the central rooftop?’

  ‘Unless we get hemmed in, ignore it. I don’t want a standing battle. Our only goal is the tunnel on the far side. Bless your weapons, brothers. Voss, give those vermin a little gift.’

  Voss grinned beneath his helm as he primed the grenades and tossed them through the gap, one after another. There was a series of deafening cracks, accompanied by flashes of bright light and waves of searing fire, and through the gap itself, a spray of dark xenos blood.

  Voss threw himself back to the task of wrenching open the adamantium doors. With the gap he had already made, Solarion and Zeed were able to help him, one on either side.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Karras demanded of Rauth.

  The woman was cradled in the crook of his left arm again, so small against his massive armoured frame. He held his bolt pistol in his right hand, knowing his primary weapon would be too unwieldy to brandish one-handed at a run. It was locked to his right cuisse.

  Karras couldn’t help thinking how he’d rather the woman wasn’t here. He suspected he would very soon need every bit of firepower the kill-team could muster.

  At least the broodlord is dead.

  ‘I’m always ready,’ grunted Rauth.

  ‘It’s open!’ Voss called out.

  ‘Talon, move! Remember your fire-sectors. Go!’

  They burst into the chamber at a run. Solarion cracked a flare and tossed it.

  What they saw almost stopped them dead.

  The walls, the floor, the ceiling, every walkway, stair and gantry; everything was literally crawling with tyranid life forms.

  The chrono kept counting down. No amount of hoping or praying could slow it.

  00:07:34.

  00:07:33.

  00:07:32.

  ‘Open fire!’ shouted Karras. ‘Death to the xenos!’

  But all he could think was, More time. We needed more time.

  18

  Bolters chugged relentlessly, their barrels growing hot. Purging flames gushed forth in a torrent, twisting side-to-side like a great dancing snake as Voss strafed the murderous ranks of the foe. Under-barrel grenade launchers coughed, their rounds detonating with lethal efficacy, carving great craters of death in the horde. The genestealers were so numerous they were almost packed shoulder to ugly misshapen shoulder. The toll on them was devastating, but they didn’t care. They had numbers to spare and then some. There was no end to them. For every ten that were blasted or burned apart, twenty seemed to emerge onto the elevated gantries and walkways around the perimeter of the chamber.

  The exit was cut off. It had been from the start. Karras had had no choice. He had ordered them to the rooftop where the cache was. With growing, heart-sickening despair, he watched the chrono tick down as if it was a death clock counting away the seconds until they were overwhelmed.

  He couldn’t let the others feel this way. It was unworthy. If they had to die, let it be glorious and noble, drowning in the blood of their enemies right up to the end.

  ‘The Emperor is watching you!’ he roared at his squad. ‘Show him your worth. You are Deathwatch. Best of the best. Show him what that means. Earn honour for your Chapters. Remember your oaths!’

  So they fought. They fought like gods of war. The genestealers seethed all around them, moving like an ocean, crashing against the old, frozen prefab structure on which they stood, then scrambling to the roof only to meet the wrath of Voss’s flamer. At this range, the weapon was savagely effective, spewing fiery death, cutting a burning swathe through literally hundreds of the foe. But it couldn’t last. Even with the additional ammo of the cache – already stripped bare – the moment would come when the last canister ran dry. Voss was ready. He would switch to his bolt pistol and knife. Standard operating protocol. But it meant Karras’s plan would never see fruition. He had been meant to help the kill-team leader hold the genestealers off while the others fell back. He couldn’t do that effectively with just his sidearm.

  Over the link, he shouted to Karras. ‘Scholar! Last canister!’

  There was no answer. At first, Voss felt his heart speed up. Had the Death Spectre fallen?

  But Karras was gunning down genestealers with the others. Gunning them down and making the kind of decision only an Alpha could make.

  ‘All of you, down off the roof. Make for the tunnel. Move as a group, triangle formation, Rauth and the woman in the middle as before.’

  ‘No!’ said Zeed. ‘I’ll not leave this fight to you alone, Scholar. You plan to martyr yourself?’

  ‘You will do as commanded, Talon Squad!’

  Balefire had begun to coruscate over his armour, the flickering
tongues getting longer with each passing second, with each kill he racked up. Arquemann was glowing, pulsing, strapped to his back by its sling. The blade wanted free, free to slaughter enemies of the Chapter to which it belonged. Karras could feel it compelling him to mag-lock his bolter. But that was not why he was ordering the others away.

  Two minutes remained on the mission chrono. It was already too late, he knew, but he wasn’t ready to believe it was over. If the others would only move clear, maybe, just maybe, he could do something to get them out of here.

  ‘You have to break for the tunnel now. Jump roof-to-roof until you are close. I will buy you the time you need to reach the exfil point, but you must do exactly as I say.’

  ‘Scholar–’

  ‘I’m giving you an order, Talon. Now move!’

  There was no arguing with him. The tone of command in his voice was as hard as the rock all around them. But still they hesitated, and he saw that he would have to make a move himself.

  ‘Go!’ he shouted at them, then he ran to the edge of the roof and leapt to another, only not in the direction of the exfiltration point. He was trying to draw some of the genestealers in the other direction.

  ‘Don’t make me do this for nothing!’ he snarled at them.

  ‘Let’s move, Talon,’ barked Rauth. ‘I need cover. Let’s go!’

  With a last glance at Karras, beset on all sides now by clambering, slavering terrors, the rest of the squad broke from the central roof and headed west to the exit, gunning down and burning all those genestealers unlucky enough to draw near.

  Behind them, Karras emptied round after round into chitin-ribbed bodies and hideous, razor-mawed faces. He fired grenades into the densest knots. The kill-count was staggering, and it kept rising, but he was soon down to his last magazine.

  Then the trigger clicked that fateful click every warrior dreads in the middle of a conflict – the last round was spent, the mag was empty. He unslung Arquemann from his back and gripped it two-handed, as it was meant to be held. Eldritch lightning began arcing between his body and the blade, bright white, bright enough to sear afterimages on the eyes.

  The genestealers around him hesitated, sensing the lethal nature of the weapon, its touch utterly deadly. But there were so many pressing at their backs, they could not hold themselves clear. Like a great crashing tide, they surged towards him again.

  Karras felt power racing through every fibre of his body. ‘You have underestimated me, alien filth!’ he bellowed. ‘And now you will learn to fear the power of the sons of Occludus!’

  The cavern filled with great bolts of lightning. The air shook. Dying creatures screamed as their life force was ripped away from them, their bodies hewn to pieces.

  At the far side of the chamber, the rest of Talon Squad had dropped from the roof of the block closest to the exit and had cut a path out through the foe.

  Solarion ran in front, point-man as ever. Rauth was just two metres behind him, and behind Rauth came Zeed and Voss. As they bolted up the tunnel with all the speed they could manage, Voss chanced a single, brief glance backwards, looking for the kill-team leader.

  He couldn’t quite see him. He couldn’t quite make sense of what he did see. It was so bright back there, his helm’s optics struggled to compensate. But he thought he saw hundreds of writhing forms suspended in the air while a figure clad in raging, blinding flame threw great spears of deadly energy out in all directions. Everything those spears of light touched burst into swirls of ash.

  There was no time to witness anything more. The others were already pulling ahead.

  Voss turned back to them and put on a burst of speed.

  The exfiltration point was just up ahead.

  But did it even matter any more?

  After all, the chrono had stopped counting down minutes ago.

  Now, all it read was --:--:--.

  19

  The exfiltration point looked like a scene from Gaudoleri’s famed triptych Aftermath at Hades. The circular expanse of the room was awash with blood, littered with the broken bodies of the dead. Four members of Talon Squad – Zeed, Voss, Solarion and Rauth – skidded into the echoing chamber and stopped, their lips forming grim lines behind their visors. They could not see their sixth member at all in this reeking mess. The chamber floor was tacky with cooling crimson. The nearest bodies looked like they had been ripped to pieces. Others nearer the far walls looked like they had been burned in flames or chewed apart by large rounds. Against one wall, more lay in a great mound.

  But of Chyron himself, there was no sign.

  Before anyone could comment, they heard footfalls from the tunnel behind them, and Karras entered at a tired, staggering run. Arquemann was once again slung on his back. When he stopped running, he collapsed to the ground on hands and armoured knees. There were deep gouges, tears and a spidery network of fracture lines all across his armour. His right vambrace had shattered completely. Only the metal frame and black layer of artificial muscle remained.

  He was gasping in pain.

  Zeed was closest to him. The Raven Guard dropped to his haunches at Karras’s side.

  ‘In the name of the primarch, Scholar, I don’t know how you did it, but I wish I could’ve stuck around to watch. Are you wounded?’

  Karras, wordless at first, waved him off, then struggled to his feet. His entire body ached. It felt like there was fire in his bones and grinding glass in his brain. It was the second time only in a long life of war that he had been forced to exercise his power like that – not just in the purging of the foe with psychic fire, but also, once he had reached the chamber exit, to collapse the tunnel between here and RP1. It wasn’t much, but it would stop the genestealers from harassing them for a while…

  … until they circled around and found another way in.

  It was dangerous, this excessive use of a power that flowed from the warp of all places. In his head, he had heard the mutterings of inhuman voices, hungry and excited, watching him with gleeful anticipation for the moment he lost control. Those sounds were not something he ever wished to hear again.

  ‘Chyron?’ he asked the others.

  ‘No sign,’ said Solarion, ‘apart from this bloodbath. He must have pulled out at the last minute.’

  Karras hoped the old warrior had indeed extracted on time. It made sense.

  The rest of us… We all made it back alive. But for what, I wonder?

  He had blinked off his chrono display. It was pointless now, just a row of dashes and colons that seemed to say You Have Failed more than anything else.

  He crossed to the circular space beneath the Inorin vent shaft – the very shaft down which they had infiltrated just over ten hours ago – and looked upwards. At the top, he could make out a tiny circle of starlit space. Ten hours. He felt so drained. It was not so much a physical exhaustion – Space Marines could operate at extremes for days on end if need be – but the strain of first suppressing then almost constantly exercising his unique abilities, which had left him close to his mental limits. That last battle had pushed him beyond them. He needed nutriment and a long, unbroken rest.

  And a book, he thought. An ancient, worthy tome in which to lose myself awhile.

  ‘I knew this would happen, Karras,’ Solarion griped, pulling off his helm. ‘If we hadn’t wasted so much time back–’

  The kill-team leader’s patience was spent. ‘Kill it, Three!’ he barked harshly. ‘It was always going to be tight. Sigma was unrealistic in his assessment. The broodlord was always going to become a factor.’

  Voss, largely ignoring the back-and-forth, had seen something of note among the bodies. He walked over to it and picked it up. ‘Now that explains a lot.’

  He was holding the severed end of Sigma’s communications relay cable.

  ‘Burned straight through. It must have taken a las- or plasma-blast during Chyron’s little skirmish. I guess he was already engaging the enemy while we were crossing the lake.’

  Solarion had been glari
ng daggers at Karras, but he, like the kill-team leader, didn’t have the necessary energy left to keep anger ablaze. ‘So what do we do now? For all we know, the Saint Nevarre is already heading out of the system.’

  ‘We have Sigma’s package,’ Karras grated, gesturing at the woman cradled in Rauth’s left arm. ‘And we’re only minutes late. I don’t think he’ll have given up on us quite yet. Reaper flight may still be in range. The signal round, if you please, brother.’

  With some small hope rekindled, the Ultramarine drew a uniquely coloured bolt from his webbing. It was red with white banding. He detached the magazine from under his bolter, pulled the cocking lever back, slid the signal round into the breech and primed it. Then he lifted the bolter vertically, sighted upwards through the mounted scope, squeezed on the trigger and loosed the round.

  A second later, the sound of the bolt detonating above the planet’s surface returned to them. There was a flash of bluish white light on the chamber floor, perfectly circular, shaped by the vent shaft under which Talon Squad stood.

  ‘So we wait,’ said Zeed, ‘and hope she’s as important to him as we think she is.’

  ‘There’s the city, Cholixe, eighty-three kilometres west of here,’ Voss replied. ‘If it comes down to it, we can make for there. They have a small space port and a subsector comms array.’

  Karras looked at the woman again. ‘She won’t last another hour. Omni, if there’s no response to the signal round, do you think you could do something with that relay cable?’

  ‘I don’t have the tools to patch in from here, Scholar. I’d need to fix an I/O jack to the end of it before I could do anything else.’

  ‘So, we have to depend on the signal round,’ said Zeed.

  ‘If there’s no response from Reaper flight within twenty minutes,’ said Karras, ‘we will grant White Phoenix the Emperor’s Mercy, kill the parasite, and make for Cholixe.’

  The others nodded silent agreement. All were thinking that the genestealer horde might find a way through to them by then. Zeed, unsatiated even now, actively hoped it.