by Nick Kyme
‘We’re done here,’ said Voss, rising from his crouch. He hefted his heavy flamer from the floor and turned. ‘The rest is up to Scholar and the others.’
Voss couldn’t check in with them. Not from here. Such close proximity to a reactor, particularly one with so much leakage, filled the kill-team’s primary comm-channels with nothing but static.
Zeed moved to the thick steel door of the reactor room, opened it a crack, and peered outside.
‘It’s getting busy out there,’ he reported. ‘Lots of mean-looking bastards, but they can hardly see with all the lights knocked out. What do you say, brother? Are you ready to paint the walls with the blood of the foe?’
Under his helmet, Voss grinned. He thumbed his heavy-flamer’s igniter switch and a hot blue flame burst to life just in front of the weapon’s promethium nozzle. ‘Always,’ he said, coming abreast of the Raven Guard.
Together, the two comrades charged into the corridor, howling the names of their primarchs as battle cries.
‘WE’RE PINNED,’ HISSED Rauth as ork stubber and pistol fire smacked into the metal wall beside him. Pipes shattered. Iron flakes showered the ground. Karras, Rauth and Solarion had pushed as far and as fast as they could once the alarms had been tripped. But now they found themselves penned-in at a junction, a confluence of three broad corridors, and mobs of howling, jabbering orks were pouring towards them from all sides.
With his knife, Solarion had already severed the cable that powered the lights, along with a score of others that did Throne-knew what. A number of the orks, however, were equipped with goggles, not to mention weapons and armour far above typical greenskin standards. Karras had fought such fiends before. They were the greenskin equivalent of commando squads, far more cunning and deadly than the usual muscle-minded oafs. Their red night-vision lenses glowed like daemons’ eyes as they pressed closer and closer, keeping to cover as much as possible.
Karras and his Deathwatch Marines were outnumbered at least twenty to one, and that ratio would quickly change for the worse if they didn’t break through soon.
‘Orders, Karras,’ growled Solarion as his right pauldron absorbed a direct hit. The ork shell left an ugly scrape on the blue and white Chapter insignia there. ‘We’re taking too much fire. The cover here is pitiful.’
Karras thought fast. A smokescreen would be useless. If the ork goggles were operating on thermal signatures, they would see right through it. Incendiaries or frags would kill a good score of them and dissuade the others from closing, but that wouldn’t solve the problem of being pinned.
‘Novas,’ he told them. ‘On my signal, one down each corridor. Short throws. Remember to cover your visors. The moment they detonate, we make a push. I’m taking point. Clear?’
‘On your mark, Karras,’ said Solarion with a nod.
‘Give the word,’ said Rauth.
Karras tugged a nova grenade from the webbing around his armoured waist. The others did the same. He pulled the pin, swung his arm back and called out, ‘Now!’
Three small black cylinders flew through the darkness to clatter against the metal floor. Swept up in the excitement of the firefight, the orks didn’t notice them.
‘Eyes!’ shouted Karras and threw an arm up over his visor.
Three deafening bangs sounded in quick succession, louder even than the bark of the orks’ guns. Howls of agony immediately followed, filling the close, damp air of the corridors. Karras looked up to see the orks reeling around in the dark with their great, thick-fingered hands pressed to their faces. They were crashing into the walls, weapons forgotten, thrown to the floor in their agony and confusion.
Nova grenades were typically employed for room clearance, but they worked well in any dark, enclosed space. They were far from standard-issue Astartes hardware, but the Deathwatch were the elite, the best of the best, and they had access to the kind of resources that few others could boast. The intense, phosphor-bright flash that the grenades produced overloaded optical receptors, both mechanical and biological. The blindness was temporary in most cases, but Karras was betting that the orks’ goggles would magnify the glare.
Their retinas would be permanently burned out.
‘With me,’ he barked, and charged out from his corner. He moved in a blur, fixing his silenced bolter to the mag-locks on his thigh plate and drawing his faithful force sword, Arquemann, from its scabbard as he raced towards the foe.
Rauth and Solarion came behind, but not so close as to gamble with their lives. The bite of Arquemann was certain death whenever it glowed with otherworldly energy, and it had begun to glow now, throwing out a chill, unnatural light.
Karras threw himself in among the greenskin commandos, turning great powerful arcs with his blade, despatching more xenos filth with every limb-severing stroke. Steaming corpses soon littered the floor. The orks in the corridors behind continued to flail blindly, attacking each other now, in their sightless desperation.
‘The way is clear,’ Karras gasped. ‘We run.’ He sheathed Arquemann and led the way, feet pounding on the metal deck. The cryocase swung wildly behind him as he moved, but he paid it no mind. Beneath his helmet, his third eye was closing again. The dangerous energies that gave him his powers were retreating at his command, suppressed by the mantras that kept him strong, kept him safe.
The inquisitor’s voice intruded on the comm-link. ‘Alpha, this is Sigma. Respond.’
‘I hear you, Sigma,’ said Karras as he ran.
‘Where are you now?’
‘Closing on Waypoint Barrius. We’re about one minute out.’
‘You’re falling behind, Alpha. Perhaps I should begin preparing death certificates to your respective Chapters.’ ‘Damn you, inquisitor. We’ll make it. Now if that’s all you wanted…’
‘Solarion is to leave you at Barrius. I have another task for him.’
‘No,’ said Karras flatly. ‘We’re already facing heavy resistance here. I need him with me.’
‘I don’t make requests, Deathwatch. According to naval intelligence reports, there is a large fighter bay on the ship’s starboard side. Significant fuel dumps. Give Solarion your explosives. I want him to knock out that fighter bay while you and Rauth proceed to the bridge. If all goes well, the diversion may help clear your escape route. If not, you had better start praying for a miracle.’ ‘Rauth will blow the fuel dumps,’ said Karras, opting to test a hunch.
‘No,’ said Sigma. ‘Solarion is better acquainted with operating alone.’
Karras wondered about Sigma’s insistence that Solarion go. Rauth hardly ever let Karras out of his sight. It had been that way ever since they’d met. Little wonder, then, that Zeed had settled on the nickname “Watcher”. Was Sigma behind it all? Karras couldn’t be sure. The inquisitor had a point about Solarion’s solo skills, and he knew it.
‘Fine, I’ll give Solarion the new orders.’
‘No,’ said Sigma. ‘I’ll do it directly. You and Rauth must hurry to the command bridge. Expect to lose comms once you get closer to the target. I’m sure you’ve sensed the creature’s incredible power already. I want that thing eliminated, Alpha. Do not fail me.’ ‘When have I ever?’ Karras retorted, but Sigma had already cut the link. Judging by Solarion’s body language as he ran, the inquisitor was already giving him his new orders.
At the next junction, Waypoint Barrius, the trio encountered another ork mob. But the speed at which Karras and his men were moving caught the orks by surprise. Karras didn’t even have time to charge his blade with psychic energy before he was in among them, hacking and thrusting. Arquemann was lethally sharp even without the power of the immaterium running through it, and orks fell in a great tide of blood. Silenced bolters coughed on either side of him, Solarion and Rauth giving fire support, and soon the junction was heaped with twitching green meat.
Karras turned to Rauth. ‘Give Solarion your frags and incendiaries,’ he said, pulling his own from his webbing. ‘But keep two breaching charges. We’ll need them.’
Solarion accepted the grenades, quickly fixing them to his belt, then he said, ‘Good hunting, brothers.’
Karras nodded. ‘We’ll rendezvous back at the elevator shaft. Whoever gets there first holds it until the others arrive. Keep the comm-link open. If it goes dead for more than ten minutes at our end, don’t waste any time. Rendezvous with Voss and Zeed and get to the salvage bay.’
Solarion banged a fist on his breastplate in salute and turned.
Karras nodded to Rauth. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, and together, they ran on towards the fore section of the ship while Solarion merged with the shadows in the other direction.
‘DIE!’ SPAT ZEED as another massive greenskin slid to the floor, its body opened from gullet to groin. Then he was moving again. Instincts every bit as sharp as his lightning claws told him to sidestep just in time to avoid the stroke of a giant chainaxe that would have cleaved him in two. The ork wielding the axe roared in frustration as its whirring blade bit into the metal floor, sending up a shower of orange sparks. It made a grab for Zeed with its empty hand, but Zeed parried, slipped inside at the same instant, and thrust his right set of claws straight up under the creature’s jutting jaw. The tips of the long slender blades punched through the top of its skull, and it stood there quivering, literally dead on its feet.
Zeed stepped back, wrenching his claws from the creature’s throat, and watched its body drop beside the others.
He looked around hungrily, eager for another opponent to step forward, but there were none to be had. Voss and he stood surrounded by dead xenos. The Imperial Fist had already lowered his heavy flamer. He stood admiring his handiwork, a small hill of smoking black corpses. The two comrades had fought their way back to Waypoint Adrius. The air in the towering chamber was now thick with the stink of spilled blood and burnt flesh.
Zeed looked up at the landings overhead and said, ‘No sign of the others.’
Voss moved up beside him. ‘There’s much less static on the comm-link here. Scholar, this is Omni. If you can hear me, respond.’ At first there was no answer. Voss was about to try again when the Death Spectre Librarian finally acknowledged. ‘I hear you, Omni. This isn’t the best time.’
Karras sounded strained, as if fighting for his life.
‘We are finished with the reactor,’ Voss reported. ‘Back at Waypoint Adrius, now. Do you need assistance?’ As he asked this, Voss automatically checked the mission countdown.
Not good.
Twenty-seven minutes left.
‘Hold that position,’ Karras grunted. ‘We need to keep that area secure for our escape. Rauth and I are—’
His words were cut off in mid-sentence. For a brief instant, Voss and Zeed thought the kill-team leader had been hit, possibly even killed. But their fears were allayed when Karras heaved a sigh of relief and said, ‘Damn, those bastards were strong. Ghost, you would have enjoyed that. Listen, brothers, Rauth and I are outside the ship’s command bridge. Time is running out. If we don’t make it back to Waypoint Adrius within the next twelve minutes, I want the rest of you to pull out. Do not miss the pick-up. Is that understood?’
Voss scowled. The words pull out made him want to smash something. As far as his Chapter was concerned, they were curse words. But he knew Karras was right. There was little to be gained by dying here. ‘Emperor’s speed, Scholar,’ he said.
‘For Terra and the Throne,’ Karras replied then signed off.
Zeed was scraping his claws together restlessly, a bad habit that manifested itself when he had excess adrenaline and no further outlet for it. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘I’m not standing around here while the others are fighting for their lives.’ He pointed to the metal landing high above him where Karras and the others had gotten off the elevator. ‘There has to be a way to call that piece of junk back down to this level. We can ride it up there and—’
He was interrupted by the clatter of heavy, iron-shod boots closing from multiple directions. The sounds echoed into the chamber from a dozen corridor mouths.
‘I think we’re about to be too busy for that, brother,’ said Voss darkly.
RAUTH STEPPED OVER the body of the massive ork guard he had just slain, flicked the beast’s blood from the groove on his shortsword, and sheathed it at his side. There was a shallow crater in the ceramite of his right pauldron. Part of his Chapter icon was missing, cleaved off in the fight. The daemon-skull design now boasted only a single horn. The other pauldron, intricately detailed with the skull, bones and inquisitorial “I” of the Deathwatch, was chipped and scraped, but had suffered no serious damage.
‘That’s the biggest I’ve slain in hand-to-hand,’ the Exorcist muttered, mostly to himself.
The one Karras had just slain was no smaller, but the Death Spectre was focused on something else. He was standing with one hand pressed to a massive steel blast door covered in orkish glyphs. Tiny lambent arcs of unnatural energy flickered around him. ‘There’s a tremendous amount of psychic interference,’ he said, ‘but I sense at least thirty of them on this level. Our target is on the upper deck. And he knows we’re here.’
Rauth nodded, but said nothing. We? No. Karras was wrong in that. Rauth knew well enough that the target couldn’t have sensed him. Nothing psychic could. It was a side effect of the unspeakable horrors he had endured during his Chapter’s selection and training programmes – programmes that had taught him to hate all psykers and the terrible daemons their powers sometimes loosed into the galaxy.
The frequency with which Lyandro Karras tapped the power of the immaterium disgusted Rauth. Did the Librarian not realise the great peril in which he placed his soul? Or was he simply a fool, spilling over with an arrogance that invited the ultimate calamity. Daemons of the warp rejoiced in the folly of such men.
Of course, that was why Rauth had been sequestered to Deathwatch in the first place. The inquisitor had never said so explicitly, but it simply had to be the case. As enigmatic as Sigma was, he was clearly no fool. Who better than an Exorcist to watch over one such as Karras? Even the mighty Grey Knights, from whose seed Rauth’s Chapter had been born, could hardly have been more suited to the task.
‘Smoke,’ said Karras. ‘The moment we breach, I want smoke grenades in there. Don’t spare them for later. Use what we have. We go in with bolters blazing. Remove your suppressor. There’s no need for it now. Let them hear the bark of our guns. The minute the lower floor is cleared, we each take a side stair to the command deck. You go left. I’ll take the right. We’ll find the target at the top.’
‘Bodyguards?’ asked Rauth. Like Karras, he began unscrewing the sound suppressor from the barrel of his bolter. ‘I can’t tell. If there are, the psychic resonance is blotting them out. It’s… incredible.’
The two Astartes stored their suppressors in pouches on their webbing, then Rauth fixed a rectangular breaching charge to the seam between the double doors. The Exorcist was about to step back when Karras said, ‘No, brother. We’ll need two. These doors are stronger than you think.’
Rauth fixed another charge just below the first, then he and Karras moved to either side of the doorway and pressed their backs to the wall.
Simultaneously, they checked the magazines in their bolters. Rauth slid in a fresh clip. Karras tugged a smoke grenade from his webbing, and nodded.
‘Now!’
Rauth pressed the tiny detonator in his hand, and the whole corridor shook with a deafening blast to rival the boom of any artillery piece. The heavy doors blew straight into the room causing immediate casualties among the orks closest to the explosion.
‘Smoke!’ ordered Karras as he threw his first grenade. Rauth discarded the detonator and did the same. Two, three, four small canisters bounced onto the ship’s bridge, spread just enough to avoid redundancy. Within two seconds, the whole deck was covered in a dense grey cloud. The ork crew went into an uproar, barely able to see their hands in front of their faces. But to the Astartes, all was perfectly clear. They entered the room with bolters
firing, each shot a vicious bark, and the greenskins fell where they stood.
Not a single bolt was wasted. Every last one found its target, every shot a headshot, an instant kill. In the time it took to draw three breaths, the lower floor of the bridge was cleared of threats.
‘Move!’ said Karras, making for the stair that jutted from the right-hand wall.
The smoke had begun to billow upwards now, thinning as it did.
Rauth stormed the left-side stair.
Neither Space Marine, however, was entirely prepared for what he found at the top.
SOLARION BURST FROM the mouth of the corridor and sprinted along the metal landing in the direction of the elevator cage. He was breathing hard, and rivulets of red blood ran from grape-sized holes in the armour of his torso and left upper arm. If he could only stop, the wounds would quickly seal themselves, but there was no time for that. His normally dormant second heart was pumping in tandem with the first, flushing lactic acid from his muscles, helping him to keep going. Following barely a second behind him, a great mob of armoured orks with heavy pistols and blades surged out of the same corridor in hot pursuit. The platform trembled under their tremendous weight.
Solarion didn’t stop to look behind. Just ahead of him, the upper section of the landing ended. Beyond it was the rusted stairway that had almost claimed Rauth’s life. There was no time now to navigate those stairs.
He put on an extra burst of speed and leapt straight out over them.
It was an impressive jump. For a moment, he almost seemed to fly. Then he passed the apex of his jump and the ship’s artificial gravity started to pull him downwards. He landed on the lower section of the landing with a loud clang. Sharp spears of pain shot up the nerves in his legs, but he ignored them and turned, bolter held ready at his shoulder.
The orks were following his example, leaping from the upper platform, hoping to land right beside him and cut him to pieces. Their lack of agility, however, betrayed them. The first row crashed down onto the rickety stairs about two thirds of the way down. The old iron steps couldn’t take that kind of punishment. They crumbled and snapped, dropping the luckless orks into lethal freefall. The air filled with howls, but the others didn’t catch on until it was too late. They, too, leapt from the platform’s edge in their eagerness to make a kill. Step after step gave way with each heavy body that crashed down on it, and soon the stairway was reduced almost to nothing.