Two huge shapes shouldered their way out of the tunnel mouth and rushed at Gottrand. Courlanth recognised the beasts instantly as donorian clawed fiends – alien monstrosities of near legendary size and ferocity. He shouted a warning to the Space Wolf but giant claws were already sweeping down on him with eye-blurring swiftness.
Arlon Buke had nerved himself up enough to edge a little closer to Maelik’s casket in readiness to collect the first harvest of red sacra. It was dangerous stuff to take undiluted – it could kill a man in frothing agony if he took too much – but Buke reasoned he had a good enough tolerance to stand a few drops here and now. He’d earned it, kept up his end of the bargain and dealt with the Crimsons, so he deserved a reward. His mouth, his whole body felt parched in a way that only the red sacra could refresh.
The first explosions surprised Buke so much that he thought some sort of accident had occurred. His instinct for self-preservation threw him to the ground before he had time to think about it. In an instant the scene changed from the more or less orderly handover of slaves to the Crimsons to a roaring, flame-spitting battle. Buke saw a stream of bolter rounds hose across the hell-mouth and splatter it with a wreathe of flames that made it truly worthy of its name. The eldar darted away from the stream of searching bolts with preternatural agility, twisting and leaping incredibly in the low gravity. Some were still caught by the bolts and brutally pounded into bloody, burning ruin but most escaped, scattering among the broken mining machinery in the blink of an eye. The srchon swirled his black cloak about himself and vanished with all the alacrity of a stage devil in a morality play.
All around him screams and confusion reigned as the prisoners tried to get away: Curses and shouts among the roar of explosions, the panicky chatter of his clansmen firing their weapons at unseen foes. Buke kept his face in the dirt and crawled towards Maelik’s casket, unaware that his rich garb of silk and satin kept him alive as Battle-Brother Maxillus of the Deathwatch methodically picked off the other pirates in the chamber.
Buke raised his face again just in time to see Maelik’s casket immolated by a plasma bolt. The delicate structure of metal and crystal shattered outwards as its contents were explosively vaporised. In the same instant, unthinkable pain lashed across one of his eyes and blinded it. He fell back and howled like an animal with the hideous sizzling meat smell of his own burned flesh in his nostrils.
Half-blinded, Buke scrabbled in the dirt with clawing fingers searching for pieces, fragments, anything that might give him hope. Screams and detonations surrounded him but his own world had shrunk to the reach of his arms. His torn hands brushed something smooth and curved that was still hot from the fires. He twisted around trying to focus his one remaining eye on his discovery.
It was a piece of tubing from the casket that was still sealed at one end. His heart leapt to see the tiny puddle of thick red liquid settled in the bottom of it. Weeping and laughing, Buke raised the broken glass to his lips and tilted it back to let the red sacra drop on to his tongue.
Explosions of orgasmic pleasure rolled through his body at the touch of the first drop. The pain from his eye was swept away, lost in a sea of absolute ecstasy. Energy flowed through him, revitalising every part of him from his brain to his glands. Every sense became crystal clear and hyperacute. Buke’s pulse pounded in his ears as he struggled to his feet and roared his defiance at the universe. He could feel his muscles rippling, ripening with rich, red blood. He felt strong, stronger than ten men, faster than the wind. Everything he’d experienced from the red sacra before was nothing compared to this.
Buke took a step forwards. Two Space Marines in black armour were in the audience chamber and were cutting their way to the hell-mouth. The Crimson’s huge bear-like pets had rushed out of the tunnel to attack them. Bloodlust swept through Buke at the sight. To see Imperial Space Marines, such fearsome giants of legend, dwarfed and overborne by the monsters set his pulse racing even faster. He would join in the victory, tear the hated Space Marines apart with his bare hands and bathe in their blood…
King Arlon Buke sprang forward with his fingers hooked like claws. He rushed into the fray shrieking like a daemon, ducked under the swinging claw of one of his bestial allies and leapt onto one of the Space Marines. The hulking, black-armoured warrior all but ignored Buke, shrugging off his grasp as if the pirate king were nothing but a small and overly rambunctious child. Buke was sent sailing past to land flat on his back beside a ruined mining machine.
Buke roared in frustration and tried to spring to his feet, but at that moment his overwrought heart virtually exploded with the strain it had been placed under. The hyperawareness given to him by the tainted red sacra ensured his dying moments were riven by indescribable agonies that, subjectively at least, lasted a long, long time.
Gottrand attacked the towering fiends like a blood-mad wolverine. A slashing claw of the first fiend was half-severed at the wrist by his long-bladed chainsword, even as his bolt pistol sent round after round ripping into the torso of the second. Courlanth joined the fray, hacking and slashing at the mountainous bulk of the twin monsters. It was as if they hewed at stone, the tough alien flesh resisting blows that would have cleaved a man in two. What injury the Space Marines inflicted seemed only to redouble the monster’s fury, putting them in a whirlwind of snapping jaws and reaching claws. They needed help to beat the things quickly.
‘Give us supporting fire,’ Courlanth ordered. It was a risk to order fire into a melee, but the fiends were big enough to make prominent targets. A split second passed and no supporting fire came in. Gottrand was struck by a blow that sent him reeling, the fiend’s claws tearing ragged holes in the Blood Claw’s armour.
‘Support fire, NOW!’ Courlanth snapped as he rushed forward to protect the staggered Space Wolf. Still no bolts came in support. The sergeant realised that Thucyid’s heavy bolter no longer sang its song of death.
‘Under attack!’ Maxillus’s voice shouted back urgently. ‘Thucyid and Felbaine are down! Poison! They’ve got–’ The comm went dead.
Courlanth’s mind reeled as he tried to fend off the gigantic fiends. More than half his team down in moments, what horror had the xenos unleashed? Maxillus had shouted about poison but no toxin should be able to overwhelm a Space Marine’s genetic-ally enhanced constitution so quickly. A glancing claw ripped at his shoulder plate and drove him down to one knee.
Courlanth’s anger and frustration coiled through him as he surged back to his feet. His chainsword flashed down on the leering, dome-shaped head of the fiend as it leaned in to bite him. Churning monomolecular teeth snarled and spat as they tore their way through the monster’s iron-hard cranium before pulping the grey matter inside to slurry. Even brain-panned the monster remained a threat, the reflexive jerk of its claws knocking Courlanth back a dozen metres.
The sergeant skidded to a halt, half-sprawled against a piece of broken machinery and tried to stagger upright. He felt as if he had been hit by a gunship, icons in his autosenses were flashing warning amber as they began to take stock of his armour’s condition. He looked up to see Gottrand plunge his sword, Hjormir, into the other fiend with an eviscerating uppercut.
Gottrand did not withdraw his blade, instead dropping his bolt pistol so that he could heave the whirling chainsword upward with both hands. The furred giant collapsed, gripping the Space Wolf with its claws in an effort to crush him against its chest, but only succeeding in driving the blade ever deeper. Gottrand staggered free covered virtually head to foot in foul alien ichor.
The sudden silence that enfolded the scene was broken only by the crackle of flames and the moans of the injured. Courlanth looked quickly up to the ledge where Maxillus and the rest of the kill-team should have been, but he could see only shadows.
‘Grip like an ice troll,’ Gottrand muttered unsteadily. Courlanth saw the Space Wolf’s scalp was laid open to the bone, and blood had slicked his braids into a thick mass
. There was also the hint of stealthy movements in the shadows, meaning the eldar had not fled. They were still here and they were stalking the two surviving members of the Deathwatch kill-team. An unfamiliar chill ran down Courlanth’s spine at the thought.
‘Gottrand, we have to get back to the others, I–’ Courlanth began before a barrage of shots swept across them. Hypervelocity needles rang off their armour in a scatter of ceramite chips and plasteel fragments. Decades of training took over as both Space Marines moved instantly to attack their assailants. Lithe figures sprang up to bar their path, wild and half-naked eldar that fought with the ferocity of daemons.
Gottrand was rapidly surrounded by darting combatants, his two-handed swings with Hjormir too slow and cumbersome to connect with his opponents. As Courlanth turned to assist he barely saw a blade flashing in at his side and had to twist desperately to avoid it. He turned to confront an eldar that seemed to have sprung from nowhere. The alien was clad in polished, insectoid armour with a spike-crowned helm, a black cloak swirling about its shoulders as it wielded a curved blade with fearsome speed and precision.
‘My archon wishes you to know that it is Archon Gharax of the Crimson Blossoms that delivers your doom,’ a voice called out in precisely accented Low Gothic from another part of the chamber. ‘You should feel honoured.’
‘Alien scum,’ snarled Courlanth in response. ‘You will all die!’
‘Never, and certainly not by your hand, sergeant,’ the voice gloated.
Courlanth fought with every ounce of his fury and skill, but the archon quite simply outmatched him. The sergeant felt like a stumbling child as he struggled after the elusive figure, every slash and shot was evaded without seeming effort, while every riposte the archon made left a new gouge in Courlanth’s armour. Warning icons were flaring amber and red at the edges of his vision. The alien was toying with him, Courlanth was sure, and the thought of it drove him to new heights of rage.
The sergeant unleashed a furious whirlwind of blows with his chainsword, forcing his opponent to skip backwards a few paces. In the momentary breathing space he snapped open a frequency to the Xenos Purgatio.
‘Lochos! Immediate kill-team extraction,’ Courlanth was sickened by the thought of retreat but his duty was clear. The kill-team had failed and now the Exterminatus weapons on the strike cruiser must be unleashed to obliterate the pirate’s nest once and for all. Something dark, terrible and corrupt had taken root in the Teramus system and Courlanth felt shame that it was beyond his strength to overcome it.
Only the hiss of static could be heard through the link. Inhuman laughter rang through the chamber.
‘My archon insists that you remain,’ the taunting voice called, ‘after so much trouble has been taken to bring you here.’
The archon darted forward, deflecting Courlanth’s swing with a thrust that slipped inexorably in beneath his guard. The sergeant felt the impact of the point piercing his armoured shell and sheathing itself in his guts. He felt the blade grate against bone as it was withdrawn as quickly as insect’s stinger. Courlanth had been injured in worse ways before but this felt completely different. Icy numbness spread out from the wound site and didn’t stop spreading. Poison!
The speed of it shocked him. Within a few heartbeats his whole body was unresponsive. The ground lurched beneath Courlanth as his legs buckled and blackness rushed into his sight. His last impressions were of falling forever.
Sight returned, at first without colour, vague splotches of light and shade in a moving pastiche. Courlanth’s fogged mind tried to make sense of the scene. He was on his side with his helmet gone and his arms locked somehow behind him. Near him other figures in black armour lay prone on the rocky ground and he could see that their arms and legs were manacled. The sergeant could vaguely feel blood oozing sluggishly from his gut-wound and decided that meant that only a short time had passed. Such a wound would have been fully sealed by his superhuman constitution otherwise.
More detail swam into focus. Nearby was a curious structure, a tall arch of twisted silver and bone that was filled with multicoloured mists. Courlanth recognised it as a warp portal, a gateway into the inter-dimensional pathways the degenerate eldar used to move themselves around the galaxy. Such artefacts were always a curse wherever they turned up. This one had no doubt been lost for millennia until the unwitting asteroid miners unearthed it. Loyal citizens would have reported their discovery but the temptations offered by the eldar had corrupted the miners, turning them into slavers and pirates.
Lithe eldar shapes were moving around the warp gate. One, noting Courlanth’s movement, turned and came closer. The sergeant saw a bone-white, angular face as it bent over him with a triumphant grin on its narrow lips.
‘Simply amazing, the recuperative properties of your kind,’ it said with what seemed genuine affection. It was using the same precisely accented Low Gothic that taunted Courlanth during his battle with the archon. ‘After centuries of study you can still surprise me on occasion.’
Courlanth did his best to spit into the face before him but he could only drool. The alien carried on as if it were talking to a pet.
‘You’re probably thinking this was all for you, aren’t you? That we planned to trap some Deathwatch here – well, you would be right. Give out some weapons and it’s only a matter of time, as I told dear Archon Gharax, before the alien hunters arrive. You see, in Commorragh we have an insatiable hunger for diversion and your kind, your perfect, genetically-enhanced, muscle-bound kind, make for some of the best diversions this tired old galaxy has to offer.
‘You will be taken from here to fight and die for our entertainment in the arenas, save perhaps for one or two of you that I will take for my own experiments. My toxin was pleasingly effective on this occasion, but that’s no reason to neglect perfect–’
A sudden explosion of white light half-blinded Courlanth and cut off the alien’s gloating in mid-sentence. The continuous hammer of bolter-fire split the air in the aftermath, mass-reactive bolts pulping the angular bone-white face in a shower of gore. The sergeant looked up to see figures in black Terminator armour towering above him, the twin flames of their storm bolters stabbing relentlessly as they cut a swath through the shocked eldar. The silver skull of the Deathwatch gleamed on every shoulder. In their midst, the grim face of watch captain Ska Mordentodt cracked in a rare smile as he and his men ruthlessly purged the aliens.
When the bodies were counted Archon Gharax was not found amongst them. Maxillus was dead, killed by a reaction to the toxins brewed by the eldar haemonculus Maelik Toir, while Felbaine was paralysed from the waist down by a spinal injury. The other members of the kill-team responded well to the Brother-Apothecary’s ministrations and could stand on their own feet before Ska Mordentodt.
‘Remember this day, brothers, teleport homers work better to summon aid than retreat,’ the watch captain began.
‘You used us as bait,’ Courlanth said. He could not keep the bitter-
ness from his words.
‘I saved your lives,’ Mordentodt reminded him, ‘and many others besides by locating the gate. One less hole for the eldar to creep in through and the universe becomes a better place.’
‘But why not tell us we had help to call upon at need? Maxillus is dead and Felbaine crippled!’
‘The alien has a thousand times a thousand ways to glean such knowledge from you; what chance then of them leading us straight to their most secret places? They had to believe you defeated, just as you had to believe yourselves defeated.’ Mordentodt shrugged. ‘You volunteered for the mission without any such promises – if I have lied to you it is by giving you help you had no right to expect.’
‘So this is the way of the Deathwatch – secrets within our own ranks – never knowing why or when we may be sacrificed to further some other design?’
‘This is the way of the Deathwatch,’ Mordentodt agreed.
; ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Nick Kyme
Nick Kyme is an author and editor from Nottingham. After working for several years as a staff writer and journalist on the magazine White Dwarf, he moved to the Black Library as an editor. He has written several novels in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 including the Tome of Fire trilogy featuring the Salamanders, the Space Marine Battles novel Fall of Damnos and the Time of Legends novel The Great Betrayal. He has also written a host of short stories and several novellas, including ‘Feat of Iron’ which was a New York Times Bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection The Primarchs.
Anthony Reynolds
After finishing university Anthony Reynolds set sail from his homeland Australia and ventured forth to foreign climes. He ended up settling in the UK, and managed to blag his way into Games Workshop’s hallowed design studio. There he worked for four years as a games developer and two years as part of the management team. He now resides back in his hometown of Sydney, overlooking the beach and enjoying the sun and the surf, though he finds that to capture the true darkness and horror of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 he has taken to writing in what could be described as a darkened cave.
Steve Parker
Steve Parker was born and raised in Edinburgh. Scotland, and now lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. As a video-game writer/designer, he has worked on titles for various platforms. In 2006, his story ‘The Falls of Marakross’ was published in the Black Library’s Tales from the Dark Millennium anthology. His first novel, Rebel Winter, was published in 2007 and he wrote Rynn’s World, the first book in the Space Marine Battles series.
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