Scribe of Terra

The Third War for Damnos persists despite the swelling casualties, revealing the xenos’ desperation for this world. Our records show they do not or cannot utilize Warp travel, yet they have employed stone portals that replenish their ranks after every battle. Lord Marneus Calgar reclaimed it personally, purging the xenos with the aid of the Imperial Guard and the Deathwatch. Yet clearly his cleansing was not thorough enough. New crevices are opening across the planet, spitting out columns of unliving soldiers like devils from the underworld.

All the brothers under my command are dead.

Our small strike force is buttressed by many of our successor chapters. Beside me fight a squad of Libators, known for their practice of ritually spilling the blood of their enemies. They must be frustrated that our foes have no bodily fluids. Clad in vibrant yellow, these brothers carry plasma guns that fire potent blasts capable of melting these xenos to slag. Not just the troops, but also the enormous arks, the xenos’ troop transports, who arrive with regularity to reinforce any emerging cracks in their advance. Their lines break only briefly before they reform.

My bolt rifle clicks empty. I have nothing to reload it with. I reach down to the body of Brother Metreos and take his firearm. This was his fourth mission as a tactical marine. I remember the trials where he had proven himself a candidate. Perhaps he entertained visions of centuries of service in the Adeptus Astartes. His duty cut short, he died well. He and the rest of the squad held the bridge for thirteen sleepless days, six of those in constant combat.

Something new comes, tall and terrible. A slender, tripod-like machine stands upon three spindly legs of burnished bronze and steel. From its rounded carapace, a network of glowing conduits snakes into a hulking energy cannon perched atop its chassis. It is an arcane fusion of sleek metal plating and coiled power cores that pulse with eldritch light. The central "head” houses a crystalline, phosphorescent orb, half-enclosed by a curved armored shell. Its cannon roaring, the giant automated walker decimates the Libators standing alongside me before their incinerators can reduce the xenos machine to ashes.

The time for my sacrifice has come. I take the Krak grenade in hand.

The xenos do not react as I break from cover. They do not respond to anything, victory or defeat, life or death. They are unfeeling. I, however, well up with hate. I hate these machines and whatever abominable intelligence created them. I hate the pride that deludes them into thinking they can oppose the Imperium and win, much less survive. I hate that I only have one life to give in the defense of humanity and the glorious vision of the immortal God-Emperor.

I set the grenade to detonate and charge at the spider-like machine. The Triarch Stalker's cannon tracks me. Green light builds in its crystalline core. The world goes white with ionized air and superheated metal.

And then nothing. It always ends here, in the split-second before annihilation that never comes.

Blinking awake, I feel the cool stone slab that serves as my bed underneath my naked form. My bionic hand lifts me to a sitting position. This modest cell, with its unadorned, unpolished metal walls, affords me what few private moments I am permitted. The scarce furniture houses my weaponry and devotional items. The chronometer declares that I have slept for almost three hours. I dress myself in a simple, off-white robe and leave my quarters for the refectory. A waiting servo-skull greets me in the corridor. A single glowing bionic eye bathes my features in crimson light.

"Sergeant Marcellus Gracchus," the disembodied voice tells me. Parchment celebrating the posthumous ministrations of this skull’s previous owner dangles from the floating cranium. "Watch Captain Kassiel would like to speak with you in the Hall of Sentinels, at your earliest convenience."

No sooner do I emerge than duty calls. "Very well," I reply with a grunt.

Two serfs approach as the servo-skull drifts away. Lobotomized mortals, they attend to me with serene expressions. "Will you be taking food and drink today, my lord?"

"Five liters of distilled water and a bowl of that nutrient-enriched gruel."

"We have already prepared a feast for Lord Ulfgar, if you would partake."

Grimacing, I enter the dining room and see the Space Wolf, hunched over and back to me, propped upon a bench, greedily shoveling handfuls of food into his mouth. Platters of roasted boar, dripping with fat and spiced with wild herbs, sit beside heaping bowls of barley porridge, sausage, and still-steaming flatbread. Ulfgar raises an eyebrow and downs a mug of what I assume is mead or ale, the liquid trickling down his chin. He flashes me a broad, sly smile as I take a seat on the bench across from him.

"Why did you have the thralls prepare such a lavish banquet?" I ask.

"Lavish?" Ulfgar chuckles. "On Fenris, this would be considered a modest spread. The cooking would be much better, too. To say nothing of the quality of the ale."

Reaching across the refectory table, I rip a roasted leg of meat and bite into it. It is warm and tender, if a bit on the dry side. "How are you finding the Deathwatch?"

His lips part, flashing his elongated canine teeth. "I long ago realized every battle is part of the same eternal war, brother. Whether I spend the next few centuries spilling alien blood or that of traitors and heretics matters not one iota to me. I have done both, and I find that the xenos and the betrayer die with the same liberal application of force."

I had expected him to treat his seconding as an honor, not to express such aloofness. "I am sure there must have been some adjustment, especially given your age. Four centuries as a Firstborn Marine before undergoing the Primaris surgery, if I recall the records I saw correctly. This must be your first mission away from your fellow sons of Russ."

Another swig of ale, and Ulfgar laughs without mirth. "Yes, they finally found a way to get rid of me. Four hundred years strapped to a jet pack and I haven’t died yet. Not even undergoing the Rubicon Primaris killed me. Did you know what they do with the mischief-makers in my chapter? When you’re just starting, they give you a pistol and a chainsword and tell you to charge. But if you have a taste for causing trouble and acting without thinking, they make an assault specialist out of you. When it happened to me, I took it as a challenge. Every encounter with humanity's enemies was a chance to show the elders what I was truly capable of. My bitterness and bravado drove me to greater feats of valor." He strokes his beard, emphasizing the patches of salt mixed in with the pepper of his naturally raven-colored hair. "A Wolf of my age and deeds is usually made a bodyguard. I tried it. It didn’t take." More grim laughter.

"Your chapter would not have offered you, and the Deathwatch would not have accepted you, unless you had proven yourself many times over against the xenos."

The grizzled Wolf shrugs. "If the requirement is to have slain myriad alien races in countless different ways, then I am qualified. The Chamber Militant of the Ordo Xenos needed decorated veterans of campaigns against the alien. My chapter needed to do something with a rascal who refuses to die. These interests aligned, and here I am."

"You have a rather fatalistic perspective on your presence here."

"Only a fool fights fate, brother. I am who I am, and I know my limits. I will never command, for example, not even as a sergeant, like you. I am a force to be unleashed. There is no shame in that. Simplicity brings a certain sort of clarity."

"Then your mind must be very clear indeed, brother."

I do not utter the words, even if I may be thinking them. The source is Varis. His skin is the color of burned wood, his eyes orbs of vivid red. His appearance results, or so I have heard, from the reaction of the Salamanders’ genetics to the high radiation of their homeworld. An Ork contraption had raked his visage sometime in the past, leaving rows of stitches across his charcoal countenance, most noticeable where they intruded into his closely cropped hair. His other significant characteristic is his shortness. Whereas most Primaris Astartes stand over eight feet tall, Varis, without his armor, barely clears seven feet. I do not doubt that, as a young neophyte, he received no shortage of abuse for his diminutive stature.

"Were you using the time to sleep as well, Varis?"

"No, Sergeant. I was training with Brother Creon in one of the exercise chambers." The fortress had many such places where members of the Deathwatch honed their skills. "I worked up an appetite sparring with him. We taught each other a few things."

I grin, heartened to see that at least some of my brothers had embraced cooperation over individualism. Varis squeezes my shoulder gently as he sits down beside me. Like me, he has also forgone his armor for a loose-fitting robe.

"Go ahead and help yourself," says Ulfgar, his words empty of sincerity.

Varis does so readily, picking up a plate and surveying his options. "Did you have Urron and Cecina make all this food for you alone?" he asks incredulously.

"Who?"

"Don’t you know the names of the mortals who cook our food?"

The Wolf scoffs. "And why bother to learn the names of thralls?"

"They prepare our food, so we need not trouble ourselves. It’s the least we can do." Varis looks to me. "Don’t you agree, Sergeant?"

I smile politely as I eat. "I must admit, I did not know their names either." Long ago, the existence of menials had faded into the background, beneath my attention. Their service was essential, but the same procedures that had deprived them of any capability for defiance had also robbed them of any remarkable personality traits.

Varis inspects a plate of roasted vegetables. "Sergeant, I heard you served on Damnos."

My mouth stops mid-chew.

"Damnos?" Ulfgar sounds impressed. "Damned hard fighting, Damnos."

The magnitude of this understatement sends me reeling. The memory of my dream, still so fresh in my mind, plays back behind my eyes. Thankfully, years of conditioning and tutelage under Chaplain Isaias mean I repress the trauma aching to intervene in my waking mind as well as my sleep. With their heightened senses, my brothers could notice the subtle whitening of my knuckles, the gritting of my teeth behind my lips. If they do, they say nothing. "All three campaigns against the Necrons. To lose the planet a second time leaves me mortified."

"I did not serve there, but my brothers did," Varis says. "They spoke admirably about their comrades from the Ultramarines. True and valiant until the bitter end. No shame in that."

Varis and I mirror each other with twin smiles. The bright white of his teeth stands out against his onyx skin and fiery eyes. His sinister appearance belies the humanity of his chapter.

"Thank you, brother," I say. "Perhaps one day we will fight together to reclaim Damnos again."

"That would be good fortune."

"This camaraderie is making me lose my appetite," Ulfgar grumbles. "I was here first."

The reproach is genuine but so unvarnished that I cannot help but laugh as I rise from the bench. "I must be going. Captain Kassiel asked to speak with me."

"Another mission?" Ulfgar asks eagerly.

"We shall see."

From the refectory, I cross the colonnade into the Hall of Sentinels. Tall pillars, etched with the sigils of the Ecclesiarchy and the Holy Inquisition, rise to a high domed ceiling. At its apex, an enormous crystal disc admits the cold gleam of the system’s dying star, a pale light that pools in measured circles across the chamber. Seven recessed braziers burn fragrant incense woods. Floating servo-skulls drift between them, silent and watchful.

The floor under my boots is obsidian, cut and polished until seams disappear. The Hall is vast, more than two hundred paces. Null-field generators hum low in the walls, and vox-dampeners hush whatever stray signal tries to leap the threshold. Hololith projectors crouch in shadowed recesses, waiting to bloom. No chairs or seats of any kind here. Everyone who enters stands as a deliberate reminder that our duty never sits easy.

At the chamber’s heart stands Watch Captain Kassiel, examining a data-slate. He wears his armor, Deathwatch black, the left pauldron burnished silver, the Blood Angels' blood-drop badge visible on his right. His helm is absent, so his hair is visible: short, pale blonde, and thin. His face is pale as marble, the planes clean and hard, and his eyes are a cold, ice-blue that catches the crystal light, making him seem carved from stone.

"You wanted to see me, Captain?"

Kassiel sets down his data-slate, the motion precise. A cherub drifts overhead, its mechanical wings whirring softly. "Your after-action report on the Ixion mission. Thorough work."

I wait. With Kassiel, compliments are preambles to criticism.

"You cited unit cohesion as 'critically deficient.' It was your first time leading a kill team.”

"I was a sergeant for decades before the Deathwatch."

"Not the same. Your Ultramarines move like parts of a machine because you've drilled together for decades. The Deathwatch doesn't have that luxury. We only take long-serving veterans, warriors already forged by their chapters. By the time they're skilled enough for our needs, they're individuals as much as products of their unique cultures."

"The Codex provides universal principles—"

"The Codex is a tool, not a scripture." Kassiel's ice-blue eyes fix on me. "Or are you suggesting your Primarch was wrong to revise it after his return?"

The words sting more than they should. I force my jaw to unclench. "No, Captain."

"Good." He moves to the hololith projector and activates it with a gesture. "Because I didn't summon you here for a debate about the Codex or battle doctrine. Inquisitor General Danai requires an escort. There's a dispute between a Rogue Trader and several of the Gordian Crusade chapters: the Death Chanters, Sable Striders, and Forge Keepers."

It takes a moment to process. "You want me to act as a bodyguard?"

Kassiel's patience sounds razor-thin. "You and Sergeant Burundai will project the Emperor's authority while Danai conducts her adjudication. You report in six hours."

"Have these chapters forgotten we're here to purge xenos, not fight amongst ourselves?"

Something dangerous flashes across Kassiel's face. "The dispute is the Inquisitor General's concern, not yours. Your assignment is to keep her alive. Danai has enemies—mundane and otherwise—who might see an opportunity." He deactivates the hololith. "You may sympathize with your fellow Astartes in this matter, Sergeant, but the situation falls entirely within her purview. Am I clear?"

"Understood, Captain." I give a crisp salute.

"Dismissed. And Gracchus?" He picks up his data-slate again. "Next time you write an after-action report, remember: I don't need you to explain what went wrong. I need you to tell me how you'll do better."

Standard protocol for an escort mission of this type is to research the individual being escorted and the most credible threats to their life. In the case of Miranda Octavia Danai, Inquisitor General of the Sarnath Cluster and long-time member of the Ordo Xenos, there are a plethora of potential assassins. Amongst her fellow mortals, these include Cold and Rogue Traders she has deprived of their profitable but heretical xenotech. Some of her peers, those of a Puritan or Monodominant streak, have unsuccessfully accused her of being a radical heretic and a closet xenophile, and it is reasonable to surmise one or more could attempt foul play. And then there are the innumerable alien warlords she has bested or foiled, as well as the surviving kin of those she has killed. It does not help that the Cluster is a war zone on multiple fronts, theaters of the ill-fated Gordian Crusade. This means contingency plans for unintended brushes with combat, not just intended ones. No doubt, Kassiel had spoken true that I was chiefly chosen for this role to enhance Danai’s status by proxy, but the motives of the Inquisitor do not concern me.

The dispute involving the Chanters, however, does bother me. Pride and arbitrariness have claimed more Astartes for Chaos than any daemon. The Death Chanters, Sable Striders, and Forge Keepers came to the Cluster as the new generation of Space Marines hungry to prove themselves. Yet instead of a glorious conquest of worlds longing for liberation, most of their present battles revolve around fruitlessly chasing xenos raiders into the void, purely to keep trade lanes secure. The Emperor’s avenging angels, used as mere security to placate the already obscenely opulent merchant houses. I sympathize with my younger brothers, who must yearn for a purpose far more suited to the God-Emperor’s purpose than their current lot.

Yet it is no alien nemesis they face but a mortal with the standing of a Chapter Master or an Inquisitor. Beatrix Karbo comes from ancient Terran nobility, but her pedigree is irrelevant in the Veiled Region. This is the state of nature, wild and lawless, across entire systems. And she has carved out a domain over which she enjoys great authority or autonomy–or at least until the Crusade reaches its borders. Now her family’s Warrant of Trade means the Angels of Death must show deference to a mortal, they who have flattened cities and subdued empires. Can the Chanters and their brethren curb their thirst for glory and humble themselves?

Burundai is waiting for me after my research and meditation. He stands as relaxed as he can be in power armor. Even at rest, his face reveals a storm behind his eyes. The Khan’s kindred cannot be at rest for too long. Their passion for speed makes duties like these grating.

"Are you well, brother?" I ask.

"The shuttle to the Saint Ephraim is waiting."

Get it over and done with as soon as possible. Not surprisingly, this is the White Scars’ approach to doing the unpleasant but necessary. The sympathetic thing to do is remain silent, I realize, and the only sound on the voyage to the Inquisitorial cruiser is the rattling of the craft.

The Saint Ephraim’s docking bay booms with cavernous echoes. Two of the Inquisitor’s acolytes wait to greet us. One is a muscular female clad in flak armor, while her companion is a short, stocky older man with a shaved head and a forked goatee. As Burundai and I draw near, they incline their heads slightly and make the sign of the aquila with their hands.

We move together toward the lift galleries that will carry us up into the command levels of the ship. On the way, the acolyte in flak armor introduces herself as Iva Vaith, while the older man goes by the mononym Uzari. They seem, for mortals, at ease around Astartes.

The lift carries us upward in silence. Burundai offers nothing, and I see no reason to fill the void. Vaith, however, does not share our comfort with quiet.

“There was a time when the presence of a single Astartes would have left me awed, my lord,” she says, “but several tours with the 76th Oswestrian and half a decade with the Inquisitor General have left me jaded. Don’t get me started about the Daemonhost incident on Kamenica! I still have nightmares about that one. Yet somehow I have resisted cynicism and have retained my positive disposition throughout the years, isn’t that right, Uzari?”

The older man murmurs his agreement.

There is something about the way the air seems to shift in Uzari’s vicinity, a subtle pressure that presses against the edges of my consciousness. My enhanced physiology registers the sensation as one might register a change in atmospheric density, yet it manifests not in my lungs but in the deeper recesses of my mind. The phenomenon is not unfamiliar, but this is different. Where a Librarian's power announces itself with the clarity of a battle horn, Uzari's presence is a deep, still ocean: immense, ancient, and controlled with a discipline that speaks of decades, perhaps centuries, of mastery. The pressure intensifies for a moment, then recedes, and I realize the older man has glanced in my direction, his eyes holding a knowing quality that confirms what my gene-enhanced instincts have already warned me. Whatever else Uzari might be, he is certainly no ordinary retainer, and the Inquisitor General keeps formidable servants indeed.

Inquisitor General Miranda Octavia Danai sits in a large leather upholstered chair at the head of a shining mahogany conference table, two decks beneath the main bridge of the Saint Ephraim. I feel no more confident meeting her despite my research. She wears an austere monastic robe draped over an armored bodyglove, an Inquisitorial icon dangling from a chain wrapped around her right arm. She has no hair, but whereas Uzari has lost his naturally, her whole head is hairless. Her eyes, deep set and wise, glitter with intelligence as we enter.

Around Danai is her entourage. There are a half dozen Inquisitorial novices of interrogator rank or below, flanked by bodyguards in striped tunics and plumed helmets holding halberds in extended arms. A huddle of dark-robed savants waits nearby, and a dozen cherub servitors in the form of pudgy infants with golden curls and round, dimpled cheeks circle above.

The conference room is large, but Danai's soft, melodic voice carries effortlessly. "Ah, yes, the esteemed battle-brothers of the Deathwatch. Sergeants Burundai and Gracchus, isn't it?"

Burundai and I agreed that I would handle most of the interfacing with mortals during this assignment. "Correct, Inquisitor General. We are ready to do our duty."

Danai gestures at her large retinue of acolytes and bodyguards. "They are redundant with you here, noble Astartes, but I hope it is no insult if I permit them to stay. Truthfully, it is my sincere if artless wish that reason and unity prevail today over petty skirmishes and vendettas."

I feel the urge to say I share this hope, but I dismiss it as beyond my station.

Shortly after, Burundai and I take our posts on either side of the Inquisitor General, standing as she remains seated. Figures emerge from the anterooms along the sides of the hall and take their seats. On one side of the long table are Astartes like me, burly transhuman supersoldiers, their appearance that of rugged human men interbred with hulking muscular giants.

Closest to Danai sits the chapter master of the Death Chanters, Mortdecai Hesau Urijah, dressed in bone-white Primaris power armor trimmed with charcoal. His helm removed, strands of greasy, straw-colored hair frame a pallid face unmarred by scars or bionics. Too rough and pale to be handsome, he nevertheless has a species of charisma appealing to those who serve under him, paired with his tendency to lead from the front. The Chanters are among the most celebrated chapters to emerge from the Ultima Founding, despite their relative novelty. Their newfound glory has dimmed since their reassignment to the trade routes of the Veiled Region.

Beside Urijah is Doreth Tion, leader of the Forge Keepers, cousins to the sons of Ferrus Manus. Unlike Urijah, little of his human face remains. The upper right quarter is gone, replaced by a red bionic eye encased in a solid black casing that complements the dull steel silver of his chapter's armor. His scalp is covered with more metallic plating than hair or human skin. A thin tube snakes from the inside of his left nostril and into his aquila-emblazoned chestplate. The right side of his mouth is a gaping gash, revealing a striking mix of enamel and metal teeth. The human remnants of his face, from his caterpillar-like eyebrow to his deep-set gray eye to his thick piscine lips, are ugly but expressive. When his natural eye rests on Burundai and me, the caterpillar jumps, and he offers a solemn nod of respect to us. His mouth, the half still with lips, twists into something like a smile. Our presence here gives him some assurance.

Lastly, furthest from the Inquisitor General at the other end of the table is Eldric Luceon. He shares Urijah's ashen complexion but none of his allure. With hollow cheeks, livid scar tissue, and a shock of unkempt hair the color of the cold void, his demeanor undercuts the noble visage found in most Astartes. He broods in the way so characteristic of the Raven Guard, from whom he and the other Sable Striders claim genetic descent. His aspect is as lightless as the deep violet armor he wears. Out of the three, he alone makes no pretense of etiquette. He is openly sulking, radiating his displeasure without any regulation or restraint. I am embarrassed for him.

After a few moments of uneasy silence, the Rogue Trader enters. She is young, much younger than I thought, early in her natural lifespan. Golden implants dot her cheeks and forehead. One side of her head is shaved to the skin; the other has long platinum blonde hair spilling over her shoulder. A simple midnight black bodyglove hugs every curve and dip of her bony body, loosely covered by a snow-white fur coat. Her entourage is the largest of all, even greater than the Inquisitor's, including her senior officers and their deputies and assistants, along with a platoon of heavily-armed human mercenaries. If meant as a show of force to intimidate, it underestimates how much damage three chapter masters could do if they threw loyalty to the wind. Perhaps for Beatrix Karbo, extravagance is simply her modus operandi.

Karbo takes a seat across from the chapter masters. There is only one seat reserved for her side of the table, but her coterie of retainers stays pressed close to her. A man directly on her right, a stocky man in tailored finery, takes a large inhale and bellows: "Hail Beatrix Karbo! Grand Duchess of the Alta Marches, Grand Duke of Turneck, Countess of Proxima Orionis, Marquessa of Daroca, Baroness of the Stasiak Reach, daughter of the great Kristof Karbo, granddaughter of Mykhayl Karbo, known as Mykhayl Magnus Karbo, great-granddaughter of Uliana Karbo…"

The recitation of the Rogue Trader's noble titles and dynastic lineage takes almost fifteen minutes before its climax. By then, the only person without glazed eyes is Danai. She remains warm and attentive, waiting long enough for the room to become silent before she begins.

"Two things are beyond dispute in this case," she says. "First, no one denies the loyalty of anyone at this table to the Imperium or the God-Emperor of Humanity, blessed be his name. Second, the time of each of us, including myself, is precious. Every moment we spend here is a moment we could have been defending or consolidating the Imperium on this frontier. So, let us cut to the quick: the Karbo dynasty claims the Astartes have neglected their duty by failing to properly secure the trade lanes connecting its settled worlds, putting the Crusade at risk."

"Slander!" Luceon hisses. "She insults our honor!"

Danai's thin lips curl into a frown. She slams a clenched fist on the table with an impressive thud. "I will have no more of that, Lord Luceon, or from any of you." She is calm and firm. "There is no time. I aim to be as efficient as possible. Allow me to summarize the facts."

One of Danai's acolytes hands her a tablet inside a brown leather sleeve. Her fingers dance across its screen, and a hololithic image projects into the empty air. Vidclips of Imperial spacecraft, not military but commercial, cycle in a loop. In each short but intense scene, the vessel comes under attack. The raiders move with inhuman speed and precision. Barbed craft of alien design, dark-hulled and blade-prowed, dart through the void like predatory fish. Darklight lances slice through engine blocks with surgical accuracy. Boarding pods pierce hulls. The attacks last minutes, sometimes seconds, before the convoys inevitably surrender.

"Resource shipments from worlds within the Karbo viceroyalty to revitalize the Gordian Crusade are arriving at their destinations less and less frequently. Around fifty trillion cubic feet of promethium is unaccounted for. I hear offensives by the Astra Militarum have stalled on several fronts, not due to defeat in the field, but because they lack the resources needed to advance."

"Drukhari," Doreth says, his mechanical voice flat with recognition.

"A Kabal," Karbo adds bitterly. "They call themselves the Bleeding Moon. They command a flotilla of fast raiders, maybe six vessels, maybe seven. They strike our most valuable convoys and vanish before our escorts can respond. My captains report the same pattern: disable the convoy’s escorts, strip the vessels of cargo and crew, and disappear into the void. The crew they take alive are never seen again."

"Such matters are beneath us," Urijah says flatly, leaning forward. "The Karbo dynasty has a large enough fleet to protect its convoys. Our attention lies elsewhere."

"You mean your doomed campaign on Xi Serpentis Secundus," Karbo breaks in, her voice husky and sardonic. "How many of your brothers have died on that misbegotten world, my lord? What does it possess, other than a species of fungoid that has proven near impossible to kill?"

Urijah's jaw tightens. For a moment, something flickers across his face—grief, perhaps, or shame—but he buries it quickly. "It can be killed," he says, his voice low and dangerous. "And I have witnessed it. We have lost thirty-seven brothers on Xi Serpentis Secundus. Each one died advancing the Imperium's borders. Each one gave his life so that humanity might claim what is rightfully ours. Meanwhile, a Trader measures victory solely by their profit margins."

"Enough." Danai's voice cuts through the rising tension. "Keep your temper in check, Lord Urijah. No one disputes that your chapter's reason for being was to assist in the reconquest of the Sarnath Cluster. However, the duties tasked to you by the Lord Militant include protecting the trade routes upon which the Crusade relies. Hunting Drukhari raiders may not be as glorious as conquering new worlds for the Imperium, but it is still a necessary function."

Doreth shifts in his seat, his bionic eye whirring as it focuses on Karbo. "Lady Karbo possesses the wealth to purchase mercenary armies and fleets to defend her convoys. She could put an end to these raids if she wishes. But she brazenly commands us to, as if she were our superior."

"Even if I could afford to invest so much of my enterprise into enhanced security for every convoy passing the outer rim," Karbo says, annoyed, "frontier mercenaries are no match for the monsters we encounter here. Monsters like these Drukhari, raiding the Imperium with impunity… These are the threats for which the blessed God-Emperor created your kind. Yet you continue to refuse to contend with these enemies of humanity out of what? Pride?"

"Pride?" Doreth's voice rises, something almost human breaking through the constant mechanical rasp. "My chapter lost half its strength at Kor'las while defending a manufactorum complex against Ork invaders. We bled so that the Crusade could have tanks and ammunition. We have earned our pride, Trader. What have you earned besides wealth?"

"Careful, lord," Karbo says coldly. "Without my wealth, the Crusade grinds to a halt. Even your chapters depend on supplies that I provide. Your pride is built on foundations I provided."

Luceon laughs, a bitter sound. "Listen to her. She thinks herself our patron."

"The Trader has a point," Danai says, steepling her fingers. "My lords, you cannot pick and choose where you fight your battles. I understand you are hungry to prove yourselves against the most challenging foes, but doing so does nothing but drain the Imperium of resources. Remember, we are on the fortunate side of the galaxy, still in the Astronomican's light. The mind boggles at the logistics sustaining the Indomitus Crusade alone. The Gordian Crusade must do more with less. The Lords of Terra say they want no more distractions in this affair."

"The Lords of Terra?" Urijah repeats the words in disbelief.

"Bureaucrats," Luceon scoffs, voice barely above a whisper. "Bureaucrats who have no idea what it is we're up against here. We all know what the real priority is for the Terran lords."

"And what would that be, Lord Luceon?" Danai asks slowly.

Luceon rolls his eyes, stands with great effort, and hoists a languid finger in the direction of Karbo. "All that matters is that the wealthy elite continue to line their pockets! She loses a few convoys, and suddenly the Imperium must bend to accommodate her. Meanwhile, my brothers die in obscurity, hunting xenos in the dark—"

Danai presses her hand to her temple and closes her eyes. The air in the conference room grows heavy, pregnant with invisible pressure. I feel it even through my enhanced physiology, a prickling sensation that crawls across my skin like insects. Luceon staggers mid-gesture as though struck by an invisible hand. His accusing finger drops, and both hands fly to his temples. His cadaverous face contorts, his jaw clenching so hard I can hear the grinding of teeth from where I stand. His knees buckle, and he collapses back into his seat with a graceless thud, his armor scraping against the chair, the chair scraping against the floor. He hunches forward, breath coming in sharp gasps, fingers pressed white-knuckled against his skull.

The silence stretches. Luceon remains hunched in his seat, breathing hard. The other chapter masters watch him with expressions ranging from concern to barely contained fury. Karbo's entourage shifts nervously, hands drifting toward sidearms before her stern glare stops them.

Danai lowers her hand and clears her throat. The pressure in the room dissipates like air from a punctured seal. "Forgive me, Lord Luceon," she says, although her tone carries no apology, "but we will maintain decorum during these proceedings."

Luceon straightens slowly, jaw working as if testing whether it still functions. He says nothing. But his eyes, when they meet Danai's, burn with resentment.

Danai allows the silence to linger before resuming. "Now, where were we? Ah, yes. The matter of convoy protection."

Karbo clears her throat, visibly emboldened by the Inquisitor’s display. "The Drukhari have cost me seventeen convoys in the past six months. The Bleeding Moon and their ilk—"

Danai raises a hand. "Perhaps a compromise. The chapters could rotate patrol duties, freeing each to pursue their campaigns while ensuring—"

The lights flicker.

It is subtle at first, a momentary dimming that could be dismissed as a fluctuation in the ship's power grid. But my enhanced senses catch what the mortals cannot: a wrongness in the air, a pressure change too slight for human perception. Beside me, Burundai shifts, his hands tightening on his bolter. The twitch of the light lasts just milliseconds, but our instincts react.

The second flicker lasts longer. Emergency lumens pulse along the ceiling, bathing the conference room in an amber warning light. Klaxons sound, distant, then closer.

"What is this?" Karbo demands, rising from her seat. Her mercenaries close ranks around her, weapons drawn, heads swiveling between Danai and the three chapter masters.

Vaith touches her ear, listening to something on her vox-bead. Her face drains of color. "Inquisitor General, we have multiple hull breaches on decks seven through twelve. Boarding craft. Unknown configuration."

"Unknown?" Danai's voice is sharp. "Identify them."

"The cogitators are scrambling, ma'am. Some kind of interference—" Vaith stops mid-sentence. Her eyes widen. "Dark Eldar."

The name lands like a grenade in the room. The chapter masters rise as one, reaching for weapons that are not present. Karbo's entourage erupts into panicked chatter. Only Danai remains seated, her expression unreadable, her mind working, her demeanor blank.

"Drukhari," she corrects softly, almost to herself. "How long since the breaches?"

"Ninety seconds, ma'am. Maybe less."

"Then they are already here."

The first explosion we hear is far away, on the other side of the ship. Then another, closer. The walls shudder. Dust falls from the ceiling in thin streams. Another blast, closer still, and the floor shakes beneath my boots. The sound isn't muffled anymore. It's sharp, percussive, eating through corridor after corridor. Metal screaming against metal. Something structural is giving way. The blasts come faster now, each one louder than the last, until the noise is everything.

The conference room's main doors explode inward. Through the breach pour nightmares in razor-edged armor. The Drukhari move like liquid shadows, their segmented plates gleaming with an iridescent sheen. They are tall and impossibly slender, their movements too fast, too fluid, as if the laws of physics bend around them out of fear. Splinter rifles chatter, filling the air with crystalline shards that hum with toxins. Karbo's mercenaries fall first, their screams cut short as the poison works quickly, bodies convulsing before they hit the ground.

I draw my combat blade and bolt pistol in a single motion. Burundai is already firing, his shots tracking the lead raiders with practiced precision. One Drukhari falls, chest cratered by a mass-reactive round. Another stumbles, then rights itself and keeps coming, grinning with needle-teeth. Not all devils and demons are spirits, nor do they all come from the Immaterium.

"Protect the Inquisitor General!" I roar.

The chapter masters have armed themselves with whatever they can find. Urijah wields a ceremonial sword torn from the wall, its edge singing as he carves through a Drukhari warrior. Doreth's bionic arm has extended some kind of integrated weapon, a compact melta that reduces an attacker to slag. Luceon fights with bare hands and feet, each blow delivered with the cold efficiency of Corax's sons, snapping necks and shattering limbs.

Vaith places herself between Danai and the breach, her hellpistol barking. Uzari stands beside her. The air around him warps and crackles. A Drukhari lunges at him, blade raised, and simply ceases to exist, unmade by a thought. The old man's eyes blaze with cold fire.

More pour through the door. Too many. They flood the chamber like water through a broken dam, their laughter high and cruel, the sound of predators who have cornered their prey.

"They're after me!" Karbo screams. "I knew it! The Kabal of the Bleeding Moon!"

"Silence."

The voice cuts through the chaos like a blade through silk. The Drukhari attack falters, warriors parting to make way for two figures who enter the ruined doorway with unhurried grace.

They are clearly sisters. The resemblance is unmistakable: the same angular features, the same predatory bearing, the Aeldari appearance, but a dark and twisted version of it, a version that has fully embraced sin and depravity. Their armor is more ornate than their subordinates', worked with sigils that seem to shift and writhe. One carries a long, serrated glaive that drips a purplish, viscous fluid. The other holds twin xenos pistols of intricate design.

The one with the glaive speaks, her voice melodic and mocking. "The Rogue Trader flatters herself. You are nothing more than simple prey for us, mon-keigh."

Her sister laughs, the sound like breaking glass. "Though we may take you anyway! For sport!"

"Sylandri. Vethras." Danai's voice is calm. Too calm. "I wondered when this day would come."

Karbo's mouth falls open. "You know them?"

"We know her," the glaive-wielder hisses. The playfulness drains from her face, replaced by something venomous. "She murdered our sister. Yrithiel. The best one of us."

"Yrithiel led a slave raid on Calth," Danai says flatly. "She butchered three thousand Imperial citizens. I tracked her for six years. I gave her a cleaner death than she deserved."

Vethras raises one of her pistols. "And now we give you what you deserve, Inquisitor. We have waited decades for this moment. Dreamed of it. Savored the anticipation."

"Your sister screamed," Danai says. Her voice carries no emotion. "At the end, she begged for life and cried out for mercy, mercy that I did not give her. I want you to know that."

Sylandri's shriek is wordless, primal. She lunges at Danai, glaive sweeping in a killing arc.

Uzari intercepts her. His psychic barrier flares, catching the blade inches from his throat, but Sylandri is prepared. She twists the glaive, and something in its hilt pulses with dark energy. The barrier shatters. The blade continues its arc and takes Uzari through the chest.

The old psyker looks down at the weapon protruding from his sternum. His mouth opens, but no sound emerges. Sylandri leans close, whispering something in his ear, and twists the glaive before ripping it free. Uzari crumples, a geyser of blood spurting from the open wound.

"No!" Vaith charges, hellpistol blazing.

Vethras puts three splinter rounds through her throat.

Vaith staggers, hands clutching at the crystalline shards embedded in her flesh. Blood wells between her fingers. Then the toxins hit. Her legs go first, a sudden, violent tremor that drops her to one knee. Her skin flushes dark, purplish veins rising beneath the surface. She tries to speak, manages only a wet gurgle, and foams at the corners of her mouth. Her body convulses once, hard, as if bludgeoned by some invisible object, and she falls beside Uzari's body.

"Burundai," I say. "With me."

We move as one, the White Scar and the Ultramarine, two warriors forged in different traditions but united in purpose. Burundai hits Vethras low, his combat blade seeking her hamstrings. I engage Sylandri, my bolt pistol barking at her guard as she closes the distance.

She is fast. I have fought the Aeldari before and know of their exceptional dexterity, but this one is fast, remarkably so. Her movements are a blur of lethal grace, each strike flowing into the next without pause or hesitation. I am driven back, my enhanced reflexes barely keeping pace.

"You are not common prey," Sylandri purrs, following me like a shadow with every dodge and weave. "You are Astartes. A rare vintage. My Haemonculi will savor you for centuries."

I do not respond with words. I react with more violence.

My bolt pistol clicks empty. I discard it and grab her glaive with my bionic hand, ignoring the searing pain as whatever acidic substance coating the blade begins to eat through the metal. With my other hand, I drive my combat knife toward her throat.

She twists away, but not fast enough. The blade opens her cheek from ear to chin.

Sylandri screams—not in pain, I realize, but in outrage. I have marred her. To the Drukhari, so vain despite their appearance, so repulsive to human eyes, such a wound is worse than death.

Behind me, I hear Burundai roaring. He has Vethras on the defensive, his blade a whirlwind that she struggles to match. For all their speed, the Drukhari are not Astartes. They cannot absorb punishment as we can. Vethras is bleeding from a dozen wounds.

But so is Burundai.

I see it too late. A splinter round lodged in the gap between his gorget and helm. Another in his hip joint. A third, a fourth. The toxins are slowing him, dulling his transhuman speed.

"Brother!" I call.

He does not answer. He cannot. His jaw is locked, muscles seizing as the poison floods his system. But he keeps fighting, keeps pressing Vethras back through sheer will.

Sylandri uses my distraction. Her glaive slips past my guard and opens my side, carving through ceramite and flesh. Pain lances through me, white-hot and immediate.

I stumble.

She raises the glaive for the killing blow.

A bolt round takes her in the shoulder, spinning her away from me. Luceon stands at the edge of the melee, a bolt pistol in hand. His hollow face is splattered with alien blood.

"Get up, brother," he snarls. "Die on your feet."

I rise.

The room has become an abattoir. Karbo's entourage is decimated, and the survivors huddle behind overturned furniture. Danai's bodyguards are dead to the last. The chapter masters have formed a loose perimeter around the Inquisitor General, their improvised weapons slick with Drukhari blood. But we are still holding. We are holding. We are staying alive. Barely.

Burundai is not.

I watch him take a step toward Vethras. Then another. Each movement is agony given form, his body fighting the toxins even as they eat away at his nervous system. He is dying. He knows it.

He charges.

Vethras laughs and raises her pistols. Splinter rounds hammer into him—chest, abdomen, thigh. He does not stop. He slams into her with the full force of a Primaris Marine, bearing her to the ground. What the takedown lacks in finesse is made up for with force. His hands find her throat.

She stabs him with a monomolecular blade, capable of penetrating through ceramite. Once. Twice. A third time, the blade sticks itself in the narrow space under his helm.

Burundai squeezes.

Vethras's laughter turns into a wheeze, then goes silent. Her neck snaps with a wet crack that echoes in the suddenly quiet room, the sound of a crisp, fibrous vegetable torn apart.

Burundai collapses atop her corpse. The alien's fragile body bursts under the weight.

Sylandri sees her sister die. The scream that tears from her throat is not human, not even humanoid. It is something feral, primal, borne from some primitive hormonal cascade.

"RETREAT!" she shrieks. "ALL FORCES, RETREAT!"

The surviving Drukhari do not hesitate. They flow back through the breach like water draining down a sink, carrying their wounded with them. Sylandri is the last to leave. She pauses at the threshold, her ruined face twisted with hatred.

"This is not over, Inquisitor!" she yells. "I will flay the skin from everyone you have ever loved! I will make art of their suffering! And when you finally beg for death, I will deny you even that!"

Then she is gone, vanished into the ship's corridors.

For a long moment, no one moves. The survivors stand amid the carnage, breathing hard, waiting for another attack that does not come.

I cross to Burundai's body. He lies face down, still pinning Vethras beneath him. I roll him over gently, then reach up and release the seals on his helm. It comes away with a soft hiss. His eyes are open, staring at nothing. His face is peaceful.

"He died well," Urijah says quietly. He has appeared beside me, the ceremonial sword still in his hand. "A warrior's death."

"Yes," I say. The word is ash in my mouth.

Danai rises from her chair. She looks older than she did moments ago, the lines on her face deeper. She walks to where Uzari and Vaith lie and kneels between them, placing a hand on each of their foreheads. "Faithful servants," she murmurs. "The Emperor knows your names."

She remains there for the span of three heartbeats. Then she stands, and when she turns to face the room, the moment of vulnerability is gone. The Inquisitor General has returned.

"Lord Urijah. Lord Doreth. Lord Luceon." Her voice carries the weight of command. "It seems our dispute has been interrupted."

Urijah actually laughs, a short, sharp bark. "An understatement, Inquisitor General."

"The Drukhari will return," Doreth says, his mechanical voice carrying an odd note. "They always do. Vengeance is their only creed."

"Then we prepare," Luceon says. His hollow eyes have not left the breach. "Together."

The word hangs in the air. I see the chapter masters exchange glances, something unspoken passing between them. The grievances that brought them here, the wounded pride, the petty disputes—none of it matters now. The xenos have reminded them of a fundamental truth.

Enemies surround us. We cannot afford to be enemies with each other.

Karbo steps forward, her composure shattered but rebuilding. "Inquisitor General, I… my resources are at your disposal. Ships. Arms. Whatever is needed to hunt these monsters."

"A generous offer," Danai says. "One, I accept."

She turns to me. Her eyes are old and tired and hard as iron.

"Sergeant Gracchus. I am sorry for the loss of your brother. He died in service to the Imperium. His sacrifice will not be forgotten."

I bow my head. "He was a true son of the Khan."

"See that his remains are treated with honor." She pauses. "And inform Watch Captain Kassiel that the diplomatic situation has… evolved. I suspect our relationship with the Adeptus Astartes of the Gordian Crusade will be rather different going forward."

I look around the ruined conference room. The bodies of friend and foe lie tangled together. The walls are scorched and pitted. The stink of blood and toxins hangs thick in the recycled air.

An hour ago, these men were ready to tear each other apart over trade routes and wounded pride. Now they stand united, if only for a moment.

How long will it last?

The shuttle ride back to the Watch Fortress is quieter than the one that took us to the Saint Ephraim. The seat across from me is empty. Burundai’s body lies in a stasis casket in the cargo hold below, wrapped in a shroud bearing the sigils of the Deathwatch and his chapter. His weapons and armor have been cleaned and catalogued. They will be returned to his chapter, along with a lock of his hair, per the traditions of the sons of Jaghatai Khan. The rites are not my own, but I know them. Every Deathwatch officer needs to know the protocols intimately.

When I arrive, I go directly to the Hall of Sentinels.

The obsidian floor reflects my armored form as I cross the vast chamber. The braziers burn low at this hour, and the dying star’s light through the crystal dome has shifted from pale silver to a dull amber. Kassiel stands where I left him, as if rooted to the same spot. Perhaps he is. Perhaps the Watch Captain never leaves this room. The thought is only half a joke.

He looks up from his data-slate. His ice-blue eyes take me in—the gouged ceramite, the field dressings sealing my flank, the blood I have not yet washed from my gauntlets.

"Report," he says.

"Sergeant Burundai is dead, Captain. Killed in action aboard the Saint Ephraim. A Drukhari Kabal—the Bleeding Moon—boarded the vessel during the adjudication and attacked the conference in force. Two of the Inquisitor General’s senior retainers were also killed. Her psyker, Uzari, and her aide, Vaith. Multiple casualties among the Rogue Trader’s entourage."

"The chapter masters?"

"They also survived."

Kassiel sets down the data-slate. That alone tells me something. In the time I have served under him, the slate has never left his hand during a briefing.

"The Inquisitor General?"

"Alive. Uninjured. She sends her regards and asks that the Deathwatch be formally involved in the response."

"Response." He repeats the word without inflection. "To what, precisely?"

"The attack was personal, Captain. The Kabal’s leaders were sisters of a Drukhari warlord that Danai killed years ago. Burundai strangled one of them before the toxins took him. The other escaped, wounded. She made threats. She will act on them."

Kassiel is quiet for a long moment. He crosses his arms, the servos in his gauntlets whining faintly. "And the dispute? The chapters and the Rogue Trader?"

"Resolved. For now. Karbo has pledged her resources to hunt the Kabal. The chapter masters have agreed to coordinate patrols of the trade lanes. Luceon was the first to propose it."

That earns a flicker of something on Kassiel’s face. Recognition, perhaps, that even the most recalcitrant warriors can be moved when the right enemy presents itself. "Luceon?"

"He fought well when it mattered. Saved my life."

Kassiel unfolds his arms and retrieves the data-slate. The moment of stillness is over. "Danai provoked the Drukhari deliberately. You know this."

I do not answer immediately. I had replayed the confrontation during the shuttle ride. I recall Danai’s voice, flat and surgical, telling the sisters how their beloved Yrithiel had begged and screamed. There had been no tactical reason to say it. No advantage to be gained by enraging two Drukhari Kabalite leaders armed with poisoned blades in a room full of unarmored mortals.

"I believe she said what was necessary to force the enemy into a mistake," I say carefully.

Kassiel’s expression does not change, but something in his posture shifts. He is a Blood Angel. He understands the calculus of rage better than most. "And before that? Her display against Luceon. The psychic reprimand."

"She brought a chapter master to his knees with a thought. In front of his peers."

"And then the Drukhari conveniently appeared, and suddenly the dispute evaporated." Kassiel’s tone is dry enough to ignite tinder. "The Inquisitor General is an experienced operator, Gracchus. She knew the Kabal was hunting her. It is possible she chose the timing and location of that conference for reasons beyond simple arbitration."

The implication settles over me like an icy shroud. Danai had known the Kabal would come. She had used the conference—the chapters, the Rogue Trader, all of us—as bait.

And Burundai had paid for it.

"That is speculation, Captain," I say. My voice is even. I do not let it be anything else.

"Yes," Kassiel agrees. "It is." He does not press the point. He does not need to. "I will inform the Watch Commander and coordinate with the Inquisitor General’s office. If the Deathwatch is to be involved, it will be on our terms. You will have new orders within the cycle."

I salute. I turn to leave.

"Gracchus."

I stop.

"You kept the Inquisitor General alive. That was the mission." A pause. "You completed it."

From Kassiel, this is the closest thing to praise I will ever receive. I accept it with a nod and walk the long obsidian floor back toward the corridor.

The refectory is empty when I pass it. No Ulfgar devouring his feasts, no Varis offering quiet wisdom. The benches are bare, the tables cleared. I continue past it to my quarters, where the stone slab waits. I remove my damaged armor piece by piece, laying each plate on the rack. The wound in my side throbs as the bodyglove peels away from clotted blood. It is already starting to heal. By the time I wake up the next morning, there may not even be a scar remaining.

I sit on the edge of the slab. The cell is as I left it. Spartan. Familiar. The chronometer tells me I have been awake for over thirty hours. I remember a proverb that Burundai had once told me from his homeworld: "Sleep is the cousin of death." The White Scars are never still.

Except in death, I realize.

I lie back on the cold stone and close my eyes. When sleep takes me, I know what I will dream of. Not Damnos this time. Not the green light and the skeletal legions. Tonight, it will be the sound of a neck breaking under a dying Astartes’s hands, and the silence that follows.

We move away from the pod, establishing a perimeter. In my visor, the chrono‑bead flickers: four hours, forty‑five minutes. The display is small, but my vision keeps coming back to the digits’ slow descent. Ahead, the remains of the Pyroclast‑Kappa‑9 refinery loom, its fractured towers bristling with vented promethium pipes. The walls of the complex are colossal piles of rubble. The barren, frost-covered landscape is a wasteland of jagged granite spars, broken crags, and sinkholes transformed into toxic mires by centuries of industrial exploitation and chemical spillage. The Departmento Munitorum has left its mark in rusted lattice walkways, lumen globes, and a labyrinth of habs and processing plants stamped with Administratum warnings to obey and endure. Massive engines and corroded pipework coil like entrails, half-swallowed by the desolate terrain.

Now, in the early stages of a Tyranid invasion, spore clouds and biological monstrosities deface the environment a thousandfold. While the northern sky broods in sullen greys, the southern horizon roils with a purple-black storm, threaded with sickly yellow veins. It is a clear sign that spores are corrupting the atmosphere. Beneath this sickly sky lie signs of violence: broken machinery, collapsed structures, corpses sprawled in the sludge. Some are flensed to the bone, others dismembered to various degrees.

A low, subterranean rumble shivers through the ice beneath my boots, and my auto-senses flare with sudden urgency, tactical overlays erupting with heat-blooms crawling toward the landing zone at speed. Dozens of them, too erratic to be machinery, too coordinated to be mindless, each one a flickering pulse of raw aggression. Cracks in the permafrost exhale the monsters. I do not hesitate. In one seamless motion, my bolt rifle swings up, the stock locking against my vambrace. The action is as natural as breath.

Behind me, the Kill Team fans outward in a practiced arc, hulking, obsidian-armored giants stepping from the still-smoking pod with purpose writ in every motion. Weapons raised, helms swiveling, each one is a blade forged for a single, sacred purpose.

On the nearest ridges, movement flits across the upper gantries: not the scuttling tread of gaunts, but something heavier, something calculating. The swarm is not charging yet. It is stalking, encircling with a hunter’s patience, biding the moment to strike. We will not provide them with the luxury of choosing when to bring the battle to us.

“Kill Team,” I bark through a piercing buzz of psychic interference, “attack!”

Ulfgar rockets forward on columns of flame, propelled by his jump pack. He lands in a crouch, power sword igniting in his hand with a crackling halo of disruptive energy. The edge hums as it slices through a gaunt’s midsection, bisecting it midleap. In his other fist, a plasma pistol burns the air, each shot melting through throngs of gaunts in blistering beams of blue-white fury. Renowned among Sven Bloodhowl's Great Company, he earned his place in the Long Watch with his actions on Haedorn II. His salt‑and‑pepper hair streams behind him, a battle‑scarred grin splitting his grizzled features. He wears the heraldry of Russ’ sons with pride. A predator in ceramite.

A gaunt leaps at him, aiming to bury its talons like hooks into his broad chest. The Wolf is too quick. With effort so languid one could almost call it lazy, he raises his sword.  The Tyranid’s arc falls directly onto the blade, dividing it at the midsection. Ulfgar laughs with rapturous joy as he hurtles upward again, hunting for another group. His apathy to unit cohesion would be anathema to my Chapter, but to him, it comes naturally.

Varis steps forward next, a hero of the Purging of the Ymgarl Moons. His crimson lenses flash as he raises his beloved pyreblaster, its massive barrel glowing molten red, coils humming. Before him, an oncoming tide of Termagants spills over fractured girders, low‑slung chitin glistening with acid ichor, symbiotic toxin‑shooters writhing at their forearms. With a loud click, his pyreblaster erupts in a thunderous roar. A tongue of white‑hot flame surges forward, engulfing several ranks of gaunts in a torrent of intense flame. Xenos limbs curl and collapse, bodies combusting in a mass as the tide ebbs and recoils. The blast’s afterheat ripples across the ground. The draconic emblem of the Salamanders on his right pauldron scowls toothily in the fiery glow.

“Burn, aliens, burn!” he intones in his deep bass voice. “Let the flames cleanse you!”

I advance with them, pausing long enough to check the retinal display for information on the facility. A web of service roads leads through a matrix of clustered refineries, and up a ridge to the command tower, our nominal rendezvous for extraction. But the Magos’s last ping came from the wreckage of his crashed shuttle to the south. The datacore needs retrieval first, then, if the Magos still lives, we escort him out. Every second wasted bleeds into the time limit: five hours until the main swarm arrives.

Boots grind on frost behind me as Creon slips into position. While the rest of us wear solely black, his helm and power pack are pure white. His right shoulder displays a red scorpion centered within a white circle. The aquila-helix gleams on his chest, and a standard-issue chainsword and bolt-pistol hang from his waist. His attention is on his wrist‑mounted medicae unit: laser scalpels, adamantine‑toothed saws, and syringes loaded with carefully calibrated drugs. Normally, he would be scanning his auspex, but the shadow of the Hive Fleet prevents any such inspection. So extreme is their psychic power, the xenos disrupt any attempts to utilize any gifts from the Machine God, along with astropathic communication through the Warp. I cannot hear it, but I have heard it described as a perpetual shrill squawk with a tendency to drive humans insane.

“How are you feeling, brother?” Creon asks. “How is the discomfort?”

“I faced Tyranids in the Aurelian Crusade. This is not new to me.”

I feel Gaelan’s presence before he steps into view, a near-imperceptible tremor at the edge of my mind. He emerges, robes trailing psychic filaments that ripple around him like heat‑shimmered air. His staff, adorned with purity seals and crowned with a resplendent golden solar disc, taps the ice. Shockwaves erupt from the contact, knocking back a wave of Tyranids, leaving them simple prey for Ulfgar. As a Librarian of the Deathwatch, Gaelan carries the burden of Warp sensitivity, a battlefield psyker born to stand against enemies and wield his mind as shield and scourge. He is quiet, but his calm intensity always hums in the air. I do not trust the Blood Ravens due to their interest in forbidden lore and propensity for larceny, but Gaelan, I have heard, is reliable. I trust in his iron will to resist the influence of Chaos, even if others may not.

Hive Fleet Behemoth was more than my baptism of fire. It was my instructor, teaching me far more about the Tyranid menace than I ever desired to know. I recognize Ixion as still barely touched by the poison. After their token resistance, the gaunt broods retreat, their more advanced breeds lurking, observing. While Orks may be brainless brutes apt to rush into headlong charges, these aliens cannot be baited against us. They are still too few, which is the only reason we are not overwhelmed as we travel to the crash site.

We reach the crater’s edge and the jagged scar in the blackened earth yawns before us, a trench ripped open by the shuttle’s violent descent. Rusted hull fragments and twisted struts lie half‑buried in oily sludge, like the carcass of some great adamantine beast. No reactor flare remains. The seals did not break. No datacore pulse, no heat signature.

I enter the crater first, heavy boots skidding on cracking ice. Ulfgar and Varis fan left and right, weapons raised. Creon follows, covering their advance. Inside the demolished shuttle, mangled servitors lie in a grotesque scene, their limbs torn, circuits sparking in flickers before dying for good. Four crewmen rest where they fell. Their bodies are broken against bulkheads, their void‑suits ruptured, faces frozen in the agony of their final moments. I kneel beside the pilot’s hatch, tracing the scorch marks that tell of last‑second thruster burns. No one aboard reached the escape pods.

The control compartment’s door hangs at a bizarre angle. Inside, I find charred wiring and burnt consoles, vox arrays salvaged with makeshift repairs, cables rerouted into spindly loops. The broadcast unit’s crystal emitter is devastated, with glass shards embedded in the console. Whoever patched this did so in an act of desperation.

Gaelan’s voice speaks inside my mind. “This is the source of the Magos’s last call.” He touches a holo-slate still clipped to the frame, and a mechanical masculine voice speaks over the vox-link, barely audible due to substantial static in the background:

“Attention, Deathwatch vessel The Last Judgment. This is Magos Biologis Kull Yamuna. My conveyance has been fatally damaged and forced to crash‑land. I survive, the datacore survives. I require immediate extraction from this location. The swarm approaches, crash site unsafe. I will seek shelter nearby until your arrival. The datacore must survive and be retrieved. Location Encarta follows. I will set this message to repeat while the anima endures. Hail the Omnissiah. Message ends.”

A stuttering pause, then binaural whines and chanting weave beneath his words:

“Five hours. Five hours and counting. And not long after that, Ixion will be devoid of all life. That biological lifeforms should be capable of such efficiency is… irregular.”

The holo-slate flickers out. Silence blankets us again. The datacore is not here. It lies somewhere beyond the wreck, no doubt with the Magos, dead or alive.

“It’s the message we heard during the briefing,” grumbles Varis through the static.

Outside, Ulfgar reads the ground around the shuttle. He does not need sensors to hunt his quarry, whatever it is. “Mud and rocks, brothers, mud and rocks!”

“Can you track him?”

Laughing without mirth, Ulfgar grunts an affirmative, the words unintelligible. Even in twilight, the old Wolf can find the ghosts of tracks. He pauses, then beckons with a wave.

We follow him up the crater’s far edge and into the broken ground beyond. The terrain quickly turns treacherous: notched black rocks lie like broken teeth in the frostbitten soil. The rivulets of runoff trickle through oily furrows and chemical pools. Worn vehicle trails crisscross the ground, some fresh, some half-erased by recent snowfall. The wind wails low between the granite bluffs. No sign of more gaunts, at least for now.

Ulfgar moves ahead of us, his every step oddly graceful despite his bulk. “See here,” he says, pointing to an indentation in the earth. “Boot treads. Wide spacing. Running. Carrying weight. Human, but modified, likely bionic replacements.”

“The Magos,” I say.

“Aye, Gracchus.” His voice is hard and guttural. It is his tone that irks me. It is familiar, bordering on patronizing. While he may be my senior in age, my rank and tenure in the Deathwatch outstrip his. I decide to let it go as he moves onward. “Someone tried to flee the crash site in haste. Alone. I reckon he tried to go to ground.”

I glance toward the horizon. The purple-black maelstrom is closer now, a roiling curtain of bio-plague and atmospheric decay. As if I needed another reminder of our deadline.

For nearly twenty minutes, we follow the Wolf, weaving between rusted scaffolds and long-abandoned promethium tanks. A sloping ridge leads us to a natural hollow between two shelves of broken stone, and Ulfgar stops mid-step.

“Here,” he says.

Despite the filters in my helm, I taste the telltale metallic ozone of plasma discharge. At the center of the ravine lies the broken body of a combat servitor, its torso still spasming with futile muscle commands. One machine-driven arm flails listlessly against the rock, the other missing entirely. The lower half of its body is gone, stumps hissing steam into the snow. Nearby lie two more bodies, a pair of naval crewmen. One has his side torn open, viscera spilling in ribbons over his void suit. The other is missing most of his head.

A servo-skull lies mangled between them, its pict-lens cracked, leaking oily fluid into the slush. I crouch beside it and lift the remains. The skull’s vox-array stutters, spitting distorted binaric phrases, then dies completely.

Creon studies them without his auspex. “All three killed within minutes of each other,” he says. “The servitor and one crewman by xenos claws. The second crewman bled out from human-inflicted wounds. Stabbing, close range. A breakdown. Or a mercy.”

A mile from the bodies lie two larger shapes. Hormagaunts. One is blown nearly in half, its upper body a melted husk, limbs fused in a hideous sculpture. The other lies curled in a final, feral pose, throat split wide, as if the victim had tried to bite even as death took it. Its tongue still spasms in the death throes of disconnected nerves.

Varis approaches, helmeted gaze fixed on the creatures’ remains. “Melta burn. That servitor was armed. Probably the Magos’s last protection.”

The Hive Fleet has deprived us of our auto-senses, but we do not need them to recognize what thousands of battles over centuries have taught us. This was no ambush. This was an attempted stand. The Magos and his escort fought here, with the latter sacrificing themselves to slay two of the Tyranids and buy their master time.

“No sign of the Magos,” Ulfgar observes. “But dead, most likely.”

“Not so.” Just a few drops of dark, almost tar-black blood smeared across a slab of rock. It leads away from the fight but vanishes within ten paces.

“Wounded, but not slain,” Varis says. “How did you miss that, Ulfgar? Are you getting negligent in your old age?”

“Bah!” The Wolf scoffs. “The sergeant was lucky.”

Pride is unbecoming of the Adeptus Astartes, but it is a common flaw. The human warriors of Fenris are fulsome, boastful, as are the Wolves of Fenris, who recruit from their stock. A more esteemed leader would deliver a lecture on humility, but I must be careful in my words. The Wolves also have a tradition of questioning authority. I am not accustomed to defiance, yet I know Ulfgar is keen to challenge me. I have commanded countless units, but they were always made up of my fellow Ultramarines. If I am to serve faithfully as a Deathwatch sergeant, I must remain aware of this fact.

“Magos Yamuna fled,” I say. “And he took the datacore with him.”

“If it still exists,” Gaelan adds flatly. “Or if he does.”

“He does.” Ulfgar’s voice is certain, almost fierce. “I’d wager it. That one survived a crash, an ambush, and this little xenos welcome party. He’s still crawling about out there. Probably talking to himself in hymns to his Machine God.”

“Then we find him,” I say, rising to my full height. I glance back at the Kill Team. “Chrono-check. Four hours, fifteen minutes. We keep moving.”

We crest the escarpment and drop into cover. Below, an overturned cargo hauler lies in the narrow gulch like a toppled beast, its hull scorched with las-burns and gouged by claw marks. Around it, a ragged cordon of defenders holds the line, military or paramilitary. Their flak armor is cracked and singed. Sixteen, maybe seventeen of them still breathe. The rest lie scattered in blood-pooled heaps, limbs torn and twisted.

Twelve Shrikes prowl the gulch. They are winged nightmares, thin-limbed and fast, hooked claws slick with gore, mouths shrieking in tones too high to be natural. They slash through the air in swift, looping arcs, dodging las-fire with agility. Each swoop is a dance of death. Las-beams cut across the sky, futile against their speed. The Shrikes flit between the shots, their wings blurring, their movements too fast for the eye to follow.

Amid the blood and chaos stands a single officer, commanding by sheer force of will. She’s straight-backed, shouting through the din. Her long leather coat is torn and crusted with blood. One arm is limp at her side, but the other holds a las-pistol high. “Stand firm!” she cries. “Die well, and the Emperor shall remember you!”

“Shrikes,” Creon mutters. “Only scouts. But more than enough to slaughter mortals.”

“They held them,” Varis observes, his tone marked with quiet respect. “Bloodied, dying… and yet they stand.”

“It is futile,” Creon replies coldly. “Our mission is the datacore and the Magos Biologis, not the final stand of a broken PDF platoon.”

The two are like fire and ice. Varis, ever the Salamander, sees worth in the courage of mortals. Creon, a true Red Scorpion, sees only inefficiency and expendability. Their philosophies are irreconcilable: one forged in the fire of duty to humanity, the other hardened in the unfeeling logic of ideological purity and zeal for the Imperial Cult.

I could end the discussion easily. But I am no tyrant, making arbitrary decisions for the sake of unity. I am their sergeant, and it behooves me to trust in the counsel of their collective wisdom and knowledge. There must be deliberation, within reason.

“They’ll die without us,” Varis says, his voice low but unwavering.

“Then let them die,” Creon answers. “They fulfilled their purpose. They stalled the Tyranids. Let us honor that sacrifice by completing our duty.”

This is my first Kill Team command. I feel its weight behind every word I speak, every hesitation. The Codex Astartes echoes in my thoughts: mission first, always. The Magos and the datacore are our objectives. Billions may hang in the balance.

And yet—

“We were made to serve mankind, not abandon it,” Varis says. “They stood against the xenos. And they still stand.”

Two centuries of war hone my instincts. Psychic interference is clouding our sensors. Vox and auspex are unreliable. The Magos’ beacon could be a phantom. We need unfiltered, human intelligence. And the only ones who’ve seen this sector with their own eyes are those bloodied souls below, doomed to demise no matter what we do.

“Spare me the idealism, Vulkanite,” Creon snaps. “My duty is to the Imperium. Not to flak-armored martyrs.”

“Enough.” My voice is sharper than I intended. Even the wind seems to hold its breath. I inhale slowly. The Codex preaches discipline and clarity. I cling to that.

“They’re local,” I say at last, more to myself than to the others. “They know the terrain.”

Ulfgar turns, a sneer in his voice. “You’d have us rely on those wretches?”

“Not rely, brother,” I reply. “Utilize.”

Creon’s vox clicks, sharp and disapproving. “They’ll hinder us. Dead weight.”

“They may have seen where the Magos went,” I answer, locking eyes with him through our visors. “Without scanners or psychic augury, we are blind. They are not.”

Gaelan speaks up, his voice like still water over stone. “We don’t know where the Magos fled. But he would seek shelter. These locals might know where such places lie.”

“That is speculation,” Creon snaps.

“No,” I say. “That is actionable intelligence. Either we descend and extract it, or we wander blind while time runs out.”

Creon does not respond. He cannot refute my operational logic.

The officer levels her las‑pistol and fires twice, rallying her troops behind the hauler. Both shots miss, and in that instant, a winged horror dives through the air, driving razor-sharp spikes between the shoulders of an unlucky defender. His scream is cut short as the monster swiftly dismembers him. The remaining militia scramble for cover, las‑rifles cracking with desperate discipline. Their fire is uneven but controlled.

“They won’t hold long,” Varis murmurs.

“Then we descend,” I say.

No one questions the order.

“Ulfgar,” I command.

He leaps from the escarpment, his jump‑pack gouging tiger‑stripes of fire across the dusky sky. He lands among the fray, the disruptive glow of his power sword cleaving a Shrike’s head clean from its shoulders. Varis follows in his wake, torrents of promethium‑fed flame surging from his pyreblaster. The PDF militia fall into rhythm, their las‑guns carving ragged arcs through the alien onslaught. Gaelan skirts the rear of the hauler, psychic wards budding around him as he dispatches stray gaunts with precise bolt‑pistol shots. I take up position on the hauler’s flank, my bolt rifle hammering a staccato funeral for the shrieking wings. Creon’s warning echoes in my mind: this victory costs us time we cannot spare. A grim stillness settles over the gulch.

Then the earth trembles.

Rocks shift along the ravine’s edge as the ground beneath us sighs. Something great and sinuous bursts from beneath us, its body a coiling, scaleless serpent of fossil‑white muscle, enormous bone spurs ripping through ice and rock with ease. It moves with terrifying speed, tunneling through permafrost only to erupt beneath the militia’s firing line. Defenders topple as it whips through them, its maw opening to reveal writhing tentacles that seize and snatch. Men fall screaming into the widening breach or drop their weapons and flee in heedless panic as the creature crashes through the line.

Varis spins, unleashing a wall of flame that turns its hide to steaming crust, but the thing only recoils, snarling in contempt before surging toward the wrecked hauler. Ulfgar intercepts, power sword flashing, but the beast ducks under his blade and coils around his legs with bone-crushing force. Ulfgar’s war cry turns into a gurgle.

At that moment, Creon strikes. The engine of his chainsword drones to life. In one fluid motion, he slashes with the churning teeth of his weapon until it becomes clogged with chitin and meat. With a powerful yank, he wrenches free the blade, taking with it the creature’s constricting tail. The beast whips free, claws raking the frozen earth, and falls to a bolt‑pistol round, the shot tearing through its skull with a resounding crack. Creon steps over the motionless body, the tip of his pistol drenched in its corrosive blood.

The five surviving PDF soldiers recoil in the aftermath. They have time to take us in. One trembling trooper’s grip tightens on his las‑rifle until the officer’s fierce glare stills his hand. The officer is a lurid sight, soaked in the blood and guts of her unit. Her eyes grow wide underneath the brim of her cap. Around her, the other mortals watch in rapt wonder and reverence as we loom above them, towering mythical paragons. While we are genetic cousins, they see us as a different species, as Astartes often view them. The galaxy teems with humanity, but a Space Marine is a rare sight, Firstborn or Primaris.

“Astartes,” she gasps.

“You command?” I ask.

She straightens. “Major Rachelle Fel, 19th Ixion Defense Cohort. I do now, my lord.”

“Report.”

“Those things,” the major says, the word dripping with contempt, “started attacking the refinery six or seven days ago. Those with the Departmento Munitorum who didn’t die evacuated the day before last. That just left the security forces and a large population of convict labor. In the absence of any central command, the situation deteriorated rapidly. First, the prisoners started rioting, then the xenos became more brazen. There were around a thousand of us, my lords, and now we are the only ones who are left—”

I interrupt her. “We require information. We are looking for a priest of Mars.”

Confused, she blinks a few times and shakes her head. “A tech-priest? I haven’t seen one in months. Like I said, it’s just been the PDF or convicts for the last two days.”

“Quickly, Major, where might someone seek shelter locally?”

She pointed to some large structures to the southeast. “The safest place would be the central command bunker. It was meant to endure a prolonged local rebellion, not an alien invasion. However, there are still sections the creatures haven’t breached yet. That is where I was leading my unit, before we were ambushed.” She hesitates before deciding to plow ahead. “My lords, is it too much to hope you are here to rescue us? I’ve been searching for news of a regroup, of a counter-attack—”

Gaelan interrupts her. “Ixion is lost,” he says coolly, “and so is your unit. We are here to extract the data that the tech-priest has. Nothing more.”

The reactions range from shock to resignation. Only the officer seems unbothered. “I see,” she says through gritted teeth.

“All we can offer you,” Varis says, “is a quick death.” He hefts his pyreblaster.

“No.” The officer shakes her head slowly, as if waking. “No, we’ve… We’ve made plans. If it isn’t too much to ask, my lords, we’d like to die in the ways we have chosen.”

“Three hours, forty-five minutes,” Creon notes to no one in particular.

“Permission granted,” I tell the major. “I will mention your loss in my report.”

“Thank you, my lords.” Without another word exchanged, she turns to return to her handful of subordinates. Some, like her, remain images of stoic stamina. Yet I could see a few of them are, at last, succumbing to the depths of despair—the death of hope.

We leave the ranks of PDF survivors behind, their grief reverberating in our ears as we stride southeast. The valley narrows and then opens onto a stretch of halved terrain, where the world flattens into a bleak manmade plateau. Under the dull wash of flickering emergency lighting, two parallel metallic loading platforms rise above piled earth and compacted rock, each one half a mile in length and crowned with rusted railings. Between them runs an elevated mag-rail track, its thick power conduits still and silent as it stretches east to west. The ground here, though littered with detritus, feels almost spacious compared to the steep and pitted crags of the ravine.

We move silently upstairs to the closest platform. The bracing gusts of wind carry the tang of oil and the noxious miasma of spreading Tyranid spores. At the far end, a squat station-post stands a lonely sentinel, an angular prefabricated booth of corrugated ferrocrete with a single-entry hatch framed by a lambent red beacon. The lumen globes sputter in and out, creating splashes of intermittent crimson light on the platform.

A flicker of movement at the edge of the pulsing catches my eye, a ripple in the shadows where none should be. For a heartbeat, I glimpse a shape: long, serrated limbs folded tight, chitin that shimmers with shifting hues as though the air itself were painting it into invisibility. It perches atop a battered crate, unnaturally still, every sinew coiled. Then lightning‑quick, it slips back into the gloom, its footfalls swallowed by the wind.

We enter the station-post in a disciplined stack. Inside, the air is stale and grimy. A single fist-thick window looks out onto the rail siding. A battered control console stands off-center, its screens dark. Behind it, a lone figure rises from a crouch. It is a middle-aged woman in tattered, stained overalls, lean and mud-smeared, gripping a shotgun.

She waits until we cross the threshold and fires in frightened fury. The blast is loud, but the shell detonates harmlessly against Ulfgar’s breastplate, scattering black powder across his armor. Her jaw drops as this happens, eyes wild beneath unkempt hair.

She lowers the shotgun, voice choking, before collapsing to her knees. “A-Astartes… I’ve heard stories! You’re here to save us!” She clings to the hope of life, like the PDF.

Varis steps forward, raising a hand to stop her. “We are not the Imperial Guard,” he intones gently. “We seek a Magos Biologis—”

“Praise the God-Emperor! Praise him! I prayed for deliverance! A second chance!”

Ulfgar picks her up by the collar with surprising deftness, considering the size of his massive hands compared to her emaciated frame, a giant lifting a starving child. “Get a hold of yourself! We’re looking for a Magos! Have you seen a Magos?”

“A what?”

“A priest of Mars! Have you seen one?”

She shakes her head, showing us her hollow cheeks. Her voice sounds haggard, gravelly. “I don’t know anything about no priests! I just work here! All the big shots left on the last mag-train car two days ago. They left us here to die!  We tried sending distress calls to the cities to the south, but our signal was jammed!”

“You were one of the convict laborers.”

“Yes!” She extends her arms and grabs for Varis’ outstretched hand. I can see crude prison tattoos on her wrists, visual references to criminal underworlds on a dozen planets. “I regret my crimes, my lords! I only stole rations to feed my family!”

After scanning her and checking the Imperial records, a short profile arises in my retinal display: Marina Bincal, thirty years old. Her record does include the theft of rations, but also myriad other convictions: assault, forgery, burglary, selling narcotics, sedition, vandalism, conspiracy, arson, and multiple homicides. Her sentence is a lifetime of hard labor on Ixion. I am sure the rest of the Kill Team sees the same information.

“Please, take me with you!” Her voice is breaking. She seems too exhausted to sob. “Take me out of here! I can’t go on like this! I don’t want to die!”

Creon interrupts her with finality. A single, mechanical click echoes in the confined space. His bolt pistol emerges from his hip holster, gripped and steadied in his ceramite gauntlet, and aimed at her scrawny form. Before anyone can speak, he fires.

The convict erupts in gore almost instantly. Fragments of bone, liquefied organs, and copious blood splashes us and the walls. Varis and Ulfgar receive most of it, being nearest to her. What remains are feet, clad in leather boots, on either side of the room.

“Why, brother?” Varis asks, perplexed.

“Her sentence for her crimes was to serve the Imperium until death. Her service was no longer required. Such is the fate of all those who dare defy the Golden Throne.”

“We are Astartes, brother, not common executioners.”

“Your sympathy for the mortals extends to recidivist scum? I can understand some paternal compassion, but I did not think the Salamanders were so… tender.”

Their voices are not raised. Standing in their suits of armor, they are emotionless and motionless. Yet I am no fool. Tension is again filling the small space between us. I am about to admonish them when one of the Tyranids intervenes before I do.

The air above us rips open in a shower of sparks and torn metal. The ventilation grating overhead splinters, and in the darkness, I see it slither through the gap, a terrifying outline, long‑limbed and curved. Its skin shimmers, folding into the shadows, but the betraying click of its claws against the console alerts our heightened senses.

It drops with feline grace, body coiling as it lands behind us. The creature’s head whips toward Gaelan, and before I can warn him, one of its fused‑bone talons arcs in a flash and rakes across the Librarian’s face. The beast comes away with what looks like a substantial chunk of Gaelan’s head. Blood wells through the crystal filigree of his psychic hood as the Blood Raven staggers away, clutching for balance with his force staff.

Instinct takes over. I spin, bolt rifle cracking twice, bullets biting into chitin, but the Lictor’s reflexes are too quick. It darts past me, closing on Varis, who brings the pyreblaster to bear with a thermal torrent. The blast washes over the monster, searing scales and releasing founts of green acidic blood, but the Tyranid only lurches, half‑driven by its animosity for us, half by the Hive Mind’s relentless will.

Ulfgar’s pack ignites in a burst of flame that scorches the walls, and before the alien can twist away, he’s on it. The power sword snaps out, its disruptive field flickering in the choking light, and he slashes the creature’s flank. Its exoskeleton cracks under the blade, curling like peeling bark, but the monster’s other spiked limb lashes backward, finding a gap in his armor to stab him beneath the neck. There is a wet thud as the Lictor’s claw buries itself around a foot deep into the old Wolf’s body, but Ulfgar does not relent.

Gaelan totters, hand pressed to his wound, vision half‑blinded. He reels toward cover, sweeping psychic wards in trembling arcs, but without both eyes, his wards falter, and the creature lunges again. I intercept, shouldering my rifle into its side, forcing it to pivot. My last round shatters a leg joint, and the Lictor crashes onto a pile of crates.

Ulfgar does not wait. He vaults onto the creature’s back, his power sword raised, and drives the blade into its carapace. The moist whistle of melting flesh echoes through the booth as the Wolf wrenches his weapon free. His eyes are wild and triumphant as he tears sinew and frees one of the creature’s bulbous bone claws from its joint.

The Lictor twists beneath him, mandibles thrashing like snakes. Ulfgar squats over its head, and then he rams the broken bone spur into the creature’s face, impaling bone‑hooks and feeder tendrils in a single, savage thrust. The beast’s body spasms, convulsing as though every nerve is fire, before a flurry of twitching settles into stillness.

The stench of burned chitin fills the cramped space as the creature’s pheromones—once a beacon to draw the swarm—fade into nothing. Gaelan sinks to one knee, his wound bleeding heavier now. Creon is already at his side, laser scalpel flicking open and clamps snapping as he presses a mesh‑seal over the wound and injects synapse stabilizers. He helps the Librarian to his feet, closing the sealant over the wound with exactitude.

“You’ll need a bionic replacement for the eye,” Creon informs him, “but it did not penetrate too deep. Damage to your nervous system is unlikely.”

“Thank you, brother,” responds Gaelan dryly, his voice only slightly strained. “I know how you fret for my mind.”

“I will perform mental and cognitive diagnostics upon return to the Fortress.”

“I am sure that you will.”

Creon has already subjected Gaelan’s mind to rigorous research in the days leading up to this mission. No doubt, he is unconvinced that a genetically deficient Chapter like the Blood Ravens, with its notable cases of treachery, can sufficiently guard against cerebral contamination from the Ruinous Powers or otherwise. To his credit, Gaelan has greeted all of Creon’s probing with his characteristic serenity and straight-faced sarcasm. Even with a mutilated face, he somehow finds the patience to indulge the Apothecary.

“Can you continue, brother?”

“As long as I stand, I will serve. But, brothers, enough about me. Time is critical. Although there are no more trains, the mag-rail may still be of use to us.” He gestures toward the window. “The depression it runs over is flat and paved. We can use it to get to the central command bunker much more quickly. Also, it will hide us.”

“Hide?” Ulfgar spat the word. “We do not hide!”

“The better part of valor is sometimes discretion.”

Ulfgar growls his disagreement.

“We are down to a little more than three hours,” I say solemnly. “Gaelan is correct. The depression will indeed get us there faster. Enough talk. Let us go now.”

I lead the way down into the sunken mag‑rail depression, every footfall echoing on the cracked ferrocrete beneath my boots. A thin mist clings to the edges of the trench, swirling around the rail’s raised guide‑beam and hiding us from prying eyes and the Tyranid spores drifting across the surface. Here, at least, the ground is level and clear of the hills and valleys that could delay us. Even with Gaelan using his staff to walk, we make swift progress to the bunker, built into the cliffside of an ice-capped knoll.

The bunker is a reinforced block of armored ferrocrete ringed by coils of razor wire and faded warning placards. Scattered before its walls lie the shredded carcasses of bat‑winged creatures, the carnage evidence of the heavy bolters that guard this place. Those turrets, now cold and silent, crown the bunker’s roof like dormant sentinels. The single armored door is unbroken, its thick plating and reinforced frame offering the only sign that someone—hopefully our elusive mission target—chose to seal themselves within. I pause a moment, hand on the hilt of my bolt rifle, then I nod to the team.

Before any of us can approach the door, the heavy bolters come alive. Rounds land just inches from our helmets, sending shards of ice and metal spraying. Instinctively, we spring out of the encroaching line of fire as the turrets’ auto‑sensors swing down. The guns whine as they pivot, cross‑referencing our biometric codes against a dead database. The turrets click through a final validation cycle and fall silent once more. The door’s control panel blinks green, the armored barrier sliding open with a grinding echo.

Inside, the air is cold and fetid, the corridor lit by fluttering emergency strips. We enter, bolt rifles raised. Beside a ruined data terminal hovers the figure of Magos Biologis Kull Yamuna. One side of his face is matted in glistening burgundy, and a shattered mechadendrite arcs from his back like a broken limb, sparking in intermittent pulses. He sways drunkenly, only to pause and right himself with precise, surgical correction—an uncanny gait that jerks and smooths in the same instant. His ocular rebreather clicks as he regards us with vacant lenses. Above it, Mechanicus ergot escapes in garbled tones, not addressing our presence but echoing through the corridor’s stale air.

I take a cautious step forward. “Magos Yamuna,” I intone in Low Gothic, “we are here to extract you and the datacore. You must come with us now.”

He flinches, metal implants clattering, and shunts away from us in a slow pivot, the exposed wiring on his damaged mechadendrite hissing. His gibberish rises to a frantic tempo. When I raise my voice again, clearer, the Magos halts—but only to telescope his Infernus pistol from a holster. His remaining bionic tentacles twitch, their pincers flexing erratically. We freeze. Across the team, weapons hover but do not move.

If we destroy the Magos, we destroy the datacore and fail the mission. This cannot happen. I lower my bolt rifle. “I am Marcellus Gracchus, sergeant of the Deathwatch. My team was sent to retrieve the datacore in your possession. May we have it?”

Yamuna makes more clicks and whirs, nonsense upon nonsense. His head jerked at the mention of my name, however, or perhaps at the name of the Deathwatch. Despite the best impression of a malfunctioning servitor, I could discern some intelligence.

“Can you do anything?” Ulfgar asks Creon.

“I’m an Apothecary, not a Techmarine. But judging from that head wound, he shouldn’t even be mobile. His auto-repair systems are probably all that’s keeping his organic components alive. It wouldn’t be too hard to overpower him and take the—”

“M-M-Marcellus Gracchus,” the Magos blurts. “The Battle of M-M-Macragge.”

“Yes,” I say tentatively, “I was at the Battle of Macragge. Were you?”

“You d-d-don’t remember me.” His mutilated visage jerks. There’s a pang of sadness in his modulated voice. “I was b-b-but an ordinary tech-priest. The F-F-First Tyrannic War. The Lacrima D-D-Dolorosa Crusade. You were in F-F-First Company—”

Ulfgar scoffs. “This is no time for reminiscing! We have less than three hours!”

“T-T-Three hours?”

“The message you sent us, Magos, about the coming of the swarm!”

“T-T-The swarm. Y-Y-Yes.” His head shakes as if in emphatic protest. “Hive Fleet T-T-Tiamat. A splinter from L-L-Leviathan. Already 25% variation in their genetic code—”

“Magos, there is no time.”

“R-R—Right.” From underneath his scarlet robes emerges a heavily augmented appendage, in whose grip is a cube-shaped device. Only when the garment parts do I see that Yamuna has strapped a sizable amount of explosives to his person. “Alien or not, they are still b-b-biological. They can be k-k-killed. And d-d-defeated.”

I take the datacore. “Yours is not the only sacrifice, Magos, but we will make sure none of them are in vain. We will use what you have gathered to make the alien suffer.”

“Yes,” Yamuna says faintly, “p-p-pain. They are biological. They feel p-p-pain.”

I lead the way out of the bunker, the door groaning shut behind us as Ulfgar secures the latch. The raised heavy‑bolter turrets stand silent once more. We move swiftly into the mag‑rail depression. Our boots echo in the hollow trench as we pass deserted loading platforms, the skeletons of cargo pallets half‑buried in ice. Every so often, a flicker of ichor‑stained metal catches my eye—a fallen container box, a twisted girder bristling with chitin. Gaelan’s one good eye scans the darkening skies, now bruised in sickly purple and black. The Tyranid resistance remains sparse as we hurry on.

The depression levels off as the platforms fall behind us. I tap my gauntlet, plotting a direct route through the rail’s sunken spine. Moonlight lengthens between broken pylons and rusted cable runs, and overhead, the clouds coil into a living storm. Each bracing gust sends floating noxious spores dancing along the trench floor.

At length, the refinery materializes through the night: vast ferrocrete walls bristling with pipework and skeletal antenna masts. Breaches gape in its hull, open wounds of ripped‑open panels and malformed bulkheads. We emerge from the trench onto the scarred service road. It leads to a conical tower stretching into the frigid night sky. It is an ideal spot for an aerial extraction, high ground away from the main facility.

“Thunderhawk. Thunderhawk, come in.”

My calls are met only with the persistent screech of the Hive Mind.

“We must ascend.” Varis points up the tower to the uplink dish at its summit.

Inside, the structure is hollow, designed to keep the harsh weather from the automated machinery. The bodies of industrial servitors—larger, more simian, and far more augmented than most of their kind—lay among the remnants of gaunts and more convict workers. The clang of our boots is the only sound as we climb the stairway.

As we step back into the open air, all eyes search for our salvation. The sky is divided between a sea of stars and the roiling infection seeking to consume everything in its path. There is no Thunderhawk. The minutes crawl. We have just over an hour.

“Look!”

We follow Creon’s outstretched hand. They crest the refinery walls like a living tide. Dozens of Termagants, and with them, hulking Tyranid Warriors bristling with carapace and bone‑rifles. They spill over the parapets, all driven by that single, unthinking hunger. Behind the ground‑force deluge, a flock of Shrikes sweeps down, their bat‑wings blotting out the stars as they spiral toward the tower in a furious dive. It is the greatest concentration of xenos we’ve faced yet—and they pour in from every angle.

“Form up!” I bark.

Ulfgar wheels into position at my side, power sword slashing between the charging gaunts. Varis backs him on the left, pyreblaster leveled in a molten arc. Creon slides into the center as Gaelan plants his staff on the grated deck, manifesting a dome of crackling force. I anchor the right flank, bolt rifle braced against my shoulder.

The first wave crashes against our line in a tide of chitin and venom. Bolt rounds punch holes in gaunt ranks. Force-enclosed blades carve warriors in two. Varis’s firestorm scorches flesh as the smoke curls. Above us, the Shrikes swoop, talons whistling past my helm as Ulfgar’s sword finds one wing and tears it free, watching it cartwheel into the gaunt‑packed deck. Creon ends a charging warrior’s life with a bolt‑pistol round.

We do not break. We hold this narrow deck against the devouring darkness, a steel wall forged of the Emperor’s brilliance and our unbreakable will. And as the wave of xenos crashes against us, I know this line must stand… or all hope for the sector dies with it.

The sky ripples. A low-frequency thrum lances through my skull like a hot needle. From the breach behind the Tyranid advance floats a new form, bulbous and grotesquely cranial, its swollen head glowing with coils of warp-light. It drifts forward, cloaked in a halo of kinetic energy. The Hive Mind’s will incarnate: a Zoanthrope. As it crests the refinery’s lip, the gaunts around it pause, chittering in rapture.

A psychic scream tears the heavens. Gaelan stiffens beside me, his teeth bared as he strains to contain the assault, wards flaring blue-white around our line. The Zoanthrope's horned head ignites with amethyst fury, and a lance of Warp-light arcs from its brow, slamming into the Blood Raven’s shield. The force cracks the deck beneath our boots. Ulfgar is hurled back, crashing through a section of railing. Gaelan bellows, pushing back with his mind, but blood streams from his ears. “It’s anchoring the swarm,” he gasps over the vox. “A synaptic node… We must destroy it!”

Bolt fire dances through the night air, but the Zoanthrope weaves in slow, drifting arcs, wrapped in an invisible veil that bends the shots aside. My rounds detonate against its shimmering barrier, each explosive shell scattering shrapnel without finding flesh. Varis’s fire lashes skyward, but even the heat of promethium cannot pierce its Warp-hardened shield. Gaelan’s focus trembles under the strain of its presence, and every moment it remains aloft, the Tyranids grow bolder, their formation tightening.

With a snarl, Ulfgar ignites his jump pack and rockets toward the creature in a burst of fire. His blade hums with destructive energy as he rises, but the Zoanthrope meets him with a pulse of sheer psychic force. The Space Wolf is caught mid-flight, limbs splaying wide before he is hurled back, crashing into the tower wall with a roar of defiance and pain. Gaelan staggers, his eyes bloodshot and glowing as he summons one final strike. He lifts his force staff skyward, and a bolt of raw energy spears from his hand, bypassing the creature’s shield with precision born of desperation. The Zoanthrope’s immense skull bulges, veins glowing purplish-blue, and then bursts with a sickening pop, spraying neuroplasm and bright green ooze as the creature crashes lifelessly to the ground. The synaptic pulse fractures, and in that instant, the swarm falters and loses direction.

The moment the Zoanthrope falls, the sky itself seems to roar in reply, not with the screech of Tyranid wings, but with the thunder of Imperial engines. Through the corrupted clouds tears a wedge of light and fury: the Thunderhawk, its aquila-emblazoned prow glowing. Twin-linked heavy bolters chatter from the hull, stitching lines of fire across the horde. Shrikes spiral into the dirt as autocannon shells rip their wings to ribbons. Termagants burst like vermin caught under tank treads, and the few Warriors that remain are broken apart by las-cannon fire that melts their chitin to slag.

The extraction ramp hisses open as the gunship hovers just above the comms tower, wash from the retro-thrusters blasting the deck with hurricane force. I bark the order, and we move: Ulfgar clutching his side, Gaelan staggering but upright, supported by Creon. Varis lays down one last gout of fire, scorching the edge of the platform. I board last, turning back only to see the swarm’s advance descending into anarchy.

Inside the gunship, amid the hum of auspex pings and servos, I activate the encrypted vox-channel. “This is Kill Team Secundus,” I say, voice steady. “Datacore secured. Prepare for immediate exfil and containment protocols. Ixion is lost—but not in vain.”

The Red Angel walks amongst us. He is a prince of the Lord of Rage, a behemoth of barbed bronze. Yet despite his daemonic ascension, his horrible and grotesque form, he is still essentially the same: wild, vicious, constantly consumed by heedless fury. With one swing his massive blade slices into a squad of our foes, cleaving their bodies in twain. He howls a guttural, dreadful roar, the stuff of nightmares. This is his calling: to lose himself in the hot passion of slaughter.

So ardent is his appetite for destruction that to steal his attention, just for the briefest of moments, is a highly coveted prestige among his children. A nod of respect, a growl of recognition implies a commendation tantamount to a blessing from the Blood God. It is a prize I have chased for centuries.

Notice me!

I must further increase the pace of my murder. I shove one of my brothers aside as I seek out more victims. We of the Grim Dawn are all World Eaters, each purified by eons of war, savage, reckless, bloodthirsty, brutal. We kill side by side, but truly, there is no kinship between us. Our weapons fall together, but without thought, without care. Camaraderie was just another emotion expunged sting by sting by the butcher’s nails. Even now I feel them whirring in my head, increasing my aggression, adding more and more momentum to my frenzy.

I spy a massive war-machine ahead. Its pilot is a maimed Astartes, an ancestor revered by his Loyalist comrades. Its armour is scorched black by innumerable dents and blasts. It lumbers toward us, a walking tank. It would make a fine prize.

Servos whine as its articulated power fist reaches for my swinging axe. I let the Dreadnought catch it, crumpling the metal blade in its grasp, while charging with my remaining axe raised. I aim for the nest of cables exposed underneath its elephantine metal chest suspended above a narrow waist and trunk-like legs. With revving ferocity, the teeth chew deep.

Notice me!

I duel the entombed warrior for… Hours? Minutes? Time is so subjective in the Warp. His strikes fly in sweeping arcs, chasing a death blow. He is plodding, precise. Meanwhile I am surrendering consciousness to the mechanical tendrils vibrating inside my brain. As my enemy grows exasperated, frustrated, I grow calm with the oxygen and adrenaline pumping in my bloodstream. The butcher’s nails are no torture device. They sharpen the senses and dull pain. They give clarity.

That is why our dead hearts so revere the Primarch. Yes, he is a privileged son of Khorne, but he gifted us serenity when he ordered the nails installed in all our heads. We will never know peace; that word is anathema to us. But the mental state induced by the thumping needles creates an ecstasy only the enraged can understand. The intensity of our fury is so great it washes everything away, lowers the volume, removes all distractions. I meander in a rose-tinted trance, a lullaby sung by the nails, the Taker of Skulls their conductor.

NOTICE ME!

At last, I have the upper hand. The goliath stumbles as it turns. I leap, axe lowered, and slam into the Dreadnought’s torso. My axe sinks far but not enough. As I hug the chassis I hack over and over, eliciting sparks and split wires until, finally, I find the Astartes revenant inside. I give him his overdue death, the mercy killing he was owed ages past.

I look up. The Red Angel has his back to me. His enormous bat-like wings lift his impossible bulk to convey him to some other corner of the battlefield. I watch in silence. All is now quiet. There are no more enemies here to slay. They all lay dead around me. It is only now that I survey them closer.

Their armour is covered in blood, or so it seems. I soon realize the armour is indeed painted the colour of blood, with subtle scorched trimmings of brass. Some of them wear Imperial insignia, but scratched, ruined, and not in battle. A good few wear the inimitable mark of Khorne. The Dreadnought is no different. It occurs to me these are fellow World Eaters. More than that, they are—were—my fellow members of the Grim Dawn.

In my mania I have killed my warband. There is no trace of Loyalist Astartes, living or dead. Had Angron presided over the massacre of his own children? Did he even still consider himself a father to us, or only Khorne’s chosen son? Had he been a product of my delirium, my ambition for his praise willing him into existence? These questions bring only pain.

I feel no remorse. I have felt very little for a long, long time, save for the perpetual hum of anger. All else is cauterized away, thanks to the nails. They permit me to feel the extremes of my default state. Rage is my religion, the calm at the centre of the storm, my paradise. I will never stop chasing it. Just as I will never stop chasing the blessing of the Red Angel who liberated me and my kindred.

I walk on. There are other battles. Of that, I am sure. Where blood flows, the Blood God looks, and where the blood flows deepest, the Red Angel appears. I will be there too.

With these infernal beings march my brothers and me. We are neither mortal nor monster, but warriors, once crusaders for human supremacy. We now fight for ourselves. Our motives are as many as the warbands present at this siege. We each have our reasons for being here. I can only speak for mine.

The Rubicae under my command advance with determined gaits, firing their relic bolters into the enemy ranks. They have no motives or minds of their own, only blind acceptance of my will. Ahriman turned them to soulless husks eons ago. I will make that wrong right too. But one vendetta at a time.

I know this pack of Wolves. I know their heraldry. I search for a familiar face. Granite-hewn features. Icy blue eyes. Braided tawny hair. A tattoo of runes on his forehead.

I have thought of this face for hundreds of thousands of years. I care nothing for the corpse sitting atop the throne on Terra. I do not seek the gifts and favours of Dark Gods. For me there was never a Long War or a Black Crusade. Just that face, forever burned into my memory, and revenge.

I see him. His hair is no longer tawny but grey. His left eye is now a red-glowing oculus implant. His face is still stone but heavily scarred. The tattoo of runes on his brow is now one part of an elaborate pictorial story running across his cheeks, jaw, and neck. He wears an immense charcoal-coloured wolfskin over his pauldrons. He locks his azure eyes on me, my face obscured behind the distinctive headgear of my legion. I sense no recognition on his part. A shame.

I point at him. “You.”

He hears me, even over the din of combat around us. The faces of his nearby brothers appear as bewildered as his does.

“On Tizca you slaughtered my mentor. A teacher and a friend. Today you answer for that. What is your name, dog?”

The warrior does not hesitate. “Rurik Fangs-First!”

“Know that Qadim Abydos is the one to kill you.”

He charges me before I remove my sword from its sheath. It is the blade of a sorcerer, intricately engraved with the glyphs of a long-dead language, the rare jewels in its hilt conduits of fell energies. Rurik hefts his two-handed axe and brings it down in a pulverizing arc. I parry the blow, the axe sizzling against the power field encasing my weapon. It takes all my concentration to resist the momentum behind the strike.

Rurik laughs. His aura is the same as it was over one thousand years ago on Prospero: unthinking brutality, a killer instinct. But it is the laugh that clinches it. That throaty, jeering laugh of contempt. This is the Wolf, to be certain.

I expect him to pull away, to back up and swing again. Instead, he keeps his weight of his axe upon my sword and kicks me square on my breastplate, causing me to stagger back.

I send images to his mind, memories I have relived over and over. My life as an aspirant, then my initiation into the XV Legion. My commander, my teacher, Xorias Typhon. As Tizca falls, he buys my brothers and I time to escape. To our shame we run, leaving him to die, cut down to the sound of Rurik’s laugh. I turned, and the Wolf’s face was the last thing I saw before the Crimson King transported us to sanctuary.

From then to this moment, from the burning of Prospero to the siege of Fenris, I have hunted him through the stars. At last, we meet again. I show Rurik all this through my psychic power, and slowly he understands the story I weave.

His face is contorted with rage. “Out of my head!”

“Xorias Typhon!” I cry.

He lets out a guttural grunt as he swings his axe wildly. Even with the distance between us I almost fail to dodge it.

“His name was Xorias Typhon!”

I can tell he is not listening. He is consumed by fury.

As he starts to run toward me, I begin to chant as I run a hand over my sword. A malign intelligence slowly awakens in the blade, which begins to radiate with a cerulean light.

Rurik freezes mid-stride. His every molecule is stuck in place, succumbed to an arcane paralysis rendering him helpless. A spectre emerges from my blade, a ghostly mass of twisting flesh and limbs. It lets out a psychic shriek that leaves me deafened before it swirls smoke-like around Rurik, gradually sifting through his mouth, nostrils, and ears.

I am grateful the Wolves tend to forgo their helms in battle, for it also means I can watch the confusion in his eyes. Astartes may know no fear, but Rurik demonstrates that we are capable of shock. I sense him searching for meaning as he becomes host to a being he does not comprehend, an eldritch wraith even older and more powerful than he, me, or any other of our kind. I have not just killed him; I have made his body host to a creature of Chaos, and a powerful one at that.

Rurik contorts and writhes, his body bulging and breaking underneath his armour. Soon the ceramite cracks, and Rurik is no longer Rurik, but a bulk of obscene and monstrous anatomy. Insane and mindless, he roars as he rampages among the Wolves.

Responsibility for the upkeep of the convoy fell to the renowned Mek Muzgash Gutwrench, who had been putting or keeping things together for Boss Grimtoof for as long as he could remember (which, admittedly, wasn’t long). He could not explain why he was able to make things work, and in fact, ruminating on it too long tended to cause headaches. He was no philosopher; he was a simple creature who loved going fast and making things explode. As it so happened, he was inherently and immensely talented at inventing functional engines, assembling rivet guns, even creating firearms from little more than scrap. He had made a reputation and earned the favor of the Boss himself, but at the moment, Muzgash felt that good will slipping through his fat fingers.

“Wus da problem, boss?”

Muzgash looked down at the grot at his feet. Diminutive and craven, the little blighters were never in short supply, but of dubious value. This one was called Dink.

“If I knew dat, Dink, dere wouldn't be a problem, innit?”

Dink considered the weapon on the bed of the truck. It was indubitably a high-caliber, fully automatic firearm, and—as was the case with most Ork weaponry—loud, big, and rapid-firing. It was extensively modified: barrels, scopes, and ammo belts were all crammed in or fastened to it. Shiny bits added a hefty amount of decorative charm.

“More dakka, boss?” Dink ventured.

Muzgash groaned and plucked up Dink from around his skinny neck. Annoyed, he tossed the grot out of the truck and into a passing rock formation.

Naturally Muzgash had thought of adding more dakka. He had also tried making it shootier and blastier, but to no reward. The snazz-gun was meant for Boss Grimtoof himself, but as of now, it was an ugly embarrassment, a source of endless frustration.

He noticed something move in one of the barrels. He snatched at it, but it squirreled away. It took some fishing with his meaty digits, but he pulled it out: a tiny green humanoid with protruding ears, a grot in miniature. It was a snotling, and they occupied the lowest rung of society. As such, Muzgash felt only relief when he popped the snotling inside his clenched fist, then wiped his hand clean on his trousers.

I do not know this world’s name. I do not care. We raided it long ago, then left it to recreate its wealth and population for our future plunder. Most of it is underground, built into caverns, the great halls and corridors of this subterranean race. For all their skill and knowledge of excavation, their weapons are woefully primitive, all but useless against our own. Even more brazenly than is characteristic for me, I dive and glide low over rows of what this species calls “soldiers.” Their globular heads fly off in fountains of magenta-hued blood as the blades attached to my bike slice through their necks in one pass, my conveyance unimpeded by even the slightest resistance. I let out a whoop as we fly deeper into the recesses of the subterrestrial city, taking breakneck turns around tight corners, weaving through compact lanes and passages. The further we go, the fewer defenders we see, the streets empty, the buildings abandoned. Everything is silent.

“They’re hiding!”

“No!” I shriek. “We came in too fast!”

They could not know we were coming. Even with the odds in our favor we never surrender surprise. There is something else amiss here. My curiosity spurs my bravado.

Then I see it. The streets end and buildings conclude where a wide fissure begins, a fracture that is miles across and even deeper. As we circle it, I see an eerie yellowish shade of green emanating from below. I assume it to be coming from some natural gas, but there is no vapor, but patterns, glyphs carved into rock by some strange intelligence.

I see the result of the shot before I hear the blast. One of my followers explodes in a flash of bright light, his bike detonating beneath him. Rising from the crevasse are two floating figures, skeletal heads, arms, and torsos lodged onto hovering platforms. They hold energy weapons alive with the same vivid yellowish-green as the glyphs, pulsing with destructive power. They stare at us with cold contempt on their metal visages.

“The size of it…” The voice belonged to Shas’ui Kais, the newest of the pilots within the detachment of XV88 Broadside Battlesuits Ka’eldi now led. There were six of them, ten feet tall weapons platforms in the form of walking war machines, wielding heavy rail rifles capable of firing high-velocity rounds that could penetrate the thickest defenses. Ka’eldi herself wore the XV104 Riptide, twice as tall as the Broadside, yet just as swift as the smaller model, with an even larger and more formidable arsenal: a heavy burst cannon, twin-linked smart missile systems, and a state-of-the-art shield generator. Around the entire squad darted shielded missile drones, each guided by advanced AI.

All of them were veterans, warriors of renown drawn from the proud T’au Fire Caste, but none of them had fought anything like Hive Fleet Gorgon. It had come from a place of nightmares, consuming all bio-mass in its path as it ravaged across the empire. These Tyranids were even more adaptative than the T’au, their physiology evolving in real-time response to the weapons they faced, each new brood possessing a range of new resistances. The T’au had reacted in kind, using a variety of ammunition and weapons, including equipment long antiquated to the empire, but new to the endless horde of voracious invaders. The Tyranids did not slow in their alterations but had to create a large number of the more plentiful but less intelligent broods, as the larger Tyranids—believed to direct and organize the swarm—took longer to form and mature. Eliminate them, it was theorized, and the swarms would revert to purely feral behavior.

“Fire!” Ka’eldi shouted to the others. Inside her suit the flickering data broadcast in bright neon colors reflected against her pale azure skin. Outside her armor the sky filled with projectiles and precision missiles that blew apart the multitude of minor Tyranids. The titanic over-fiend, wounded, let out a psychic scream that left Ka’eldi stunned. Her mind soon cleared, however, and before long, the giant Tyranid lay dead at her feet.

Despite their decomposing appearance, these disgusting parodies of Space Marines were formidable enemies. Wherever their weapons hit, the Imperial Guard fell, strains of crippling sickness spreading through their bodies. Weapons barely even fazed them, blasts and bolts absorbed into gnarled fusions of tissue and ceramite plate. Although the Guardsmen outnumbered them many times over, nothing seemed to interrupt the lethargic, scattered march of the Plague Marines. A discordant symphony of piercing shrieks, guttural death-rattles and the buzzing of warp-spawned pests followed them.

Lieutenant Selwyn Barras cursed the day he had ever set foot on Ephesos. His regiment had come to the feudal world in response to bombastic claims that the dead were rising and slaughtering the human population. Barras’ superiors had put down the preliminary reports to the superstitious hysteria of barely-civilized serfs toiling in dark lowlands, growing meager rice in paddy fields. Following their deployment, however, regimental commanders soon assessed the blunt reality. Epidemics had ravaged Ephesos for months, but rather than alerting Terra to the outbreaks, the planetary governor had remained doggedly focused on ensuring that the world supplied its regular tithe of rice bushels to the Imperium. The governor and his staff had been the only ones off-planet to know about the hastily-dug mass graves containing the hundreds of thousands of peasants claimed by the spreading pestilence. The governor had broken his silence only when reanimated corpses had clambered out of their crude, shared tombs, ravaging all living things discovered in their paths. Fortunately, the mindless undead could not hope to match the exceptional training and veteran leadership of an Imperial Guard regiment. Rot rendered once-human bodies into soft meat easily torn apart by laser fire. Defeating the zombie hordes had proved more time-consuming than challenging, and in a matter of weeks, most of Ephesos’ key cities had been reclaimed by the Astra Militarum.

Nature had not borne the plagues, nor their horrific creations. Unbeknownst to everyone, a Death Guard warband had instigated it all, and they were none too pleased at the disruption of their plans. They had attacked the Imperial forward positions overnight, hobbling across the horizon, a slow but thorough razing of all opposition. Regimental headquarters had instructed Barras to defend a dilapidated fortification along a stone wall running from a great river to a small inlet of a distant sea. The primitive masons who had constructed the barricade, with their limited knowledge of the larger universe in which they lived, would never have fathomed that their bulwark would someday be a citadel for the Imperial Guard against infernal demi-gods.

“Not much we can do without plasma weapons, much less armored support,” Barras murmured to himself, chewing on his lower lip. He let out a troubled sigh.

Commissar Aelia Tremelle, an ever-present face on the frontlines, could read the concern on Barras’ face as they observed the Plague Marines easily routing the forward positions. “The Emperor protects!” she yelled over the din of battle. What Tremelle lacked in persuasion she made up for in force of will. She was an ardent believer in the Imperium, and it was not hard to share her certainty, to emulate her zeal and unquestioning loyalty. Usually when Barras spied Tremelle’s peaked hat and fancily decorated coat, it bolstered his morale, reminded him that the all-powerful God Emperor safeguarded humanity, against enemies both material and immaterial.

This time was different. He reckoned by morning it was more probable he and the rest of the unit would be host to maggots rather than Tremelle’s unflappable passion.

He buried his pessimism, though, knowing he could not risk revealing it. Tremelle would have used it as an excuse for a summary execution, but that was not Barras’ main fear. He was more afraid that his despair would dishearten the rank-and-file, the men and women who depended on him for strength and guidance. Tremelle inspired them with moral purity, but it was from Barras they looked for leadership. If they saw him wavering, giving in to doubt and fear, they would resign themselves to annihilation. It was unlikely they could win against heretic Astartes, of course, but victory was not the goal now. Their objective was to offer the strongest resistance they could muster, to not give a single inch freely to the approaching traitors and their Chaos overlords.

He grabbed the Aquila necklace he wore and pressed it against his lips. Readying his bolt pistol, he turned from Tremelle to face the soldiers who had fixed their wide eyes upon him, their las-rifles primed. His heart thudded in his chest in anticipation as he searched for the words. “Have no fear! We will never surrender! We fight for humanity and the Emperor! All of you: die standing! Be ready to greet the Emperor with pride!” Tremelle cheered first as he finished, a booming hurrah, which the enlisted ranks copied with raucous shouting of their own. The speech, as brief as it was, had done its job.

Barras lifted himself up, aimed toward the Plague Marines, and fired. Lasers flashed past him, hitting their targets with great accuracy, but with minimal effect. The Death Guard traitors kept up their relentless march, cascades of shells spewing from their filth-encrusted weapons. Beside him, the side of Tremelle’s head exploded in a gory mess. Her corpse toppled over seconds later. A determined Guardsman took her place. Tremelle had often spoke of her demise in hallowed, sacred terms, promising it would be a noble sacrifice. In truth, Barras saw nothing poetic or dignified about it. Instead, he just wished that he would meet his death as quickly and unexpectedly as she had.

“Look!” Barras swung his head around and saw a trooper pointing heavenward. Following the upturned finger with his eyes, Barras noticed a trail of fire blazing across the sky. It looked as though a meteor storm had suddenly broken out over Ephesos, another ominous omen to go along with the dead rising and demonic corruption. He could not long take his gaze away from the oncoming scourge; their drumming bolters would not permit them to be ignored. Each concussive shot that landed sent dirt, blood and viscera flying. It took every ounce of willpower to take decent aim and fire, and every fiber of his courage not to lose his nerve when he saw a Plague Marine disregard the shot when it landed. The only weapon he possessed still serving its function was his faith, faith in the Emperor, for it was that alone that kept him rigid to where he stood.

Providence appeared to reward that faith. As the apparent meteoroids drew nearer, gaining ever more spectacular speed, it became clear they were something else entirely. They were drop pods of the Adeptus Astartes, and with ear-popping booms they plunged into the earth to the west of Barras’ position. Rocks and rubble sailed high in the air. Almost immediately pod doors whisked open, releasing their enormous occupants.

The head of every soldier in Barras’ unit, the lieutenant himself included, had turned to gawk at the Space Marines with awe. In their power armor, they stood just over eight feet tall. To call them colossuses would barely do them justice. Despite looking their human appearance, they were nevertheless alien and threatening, exuding auras of overwhelming violence. Their faces were hidden behind their helms, muzzle-mouthed and skull-faced, with piercing red lenses. Their armor was a pale tone of gray with yellow trim, and on their left pauldron a red scorpion raised its stinger menacingly against a white circle. In fluid motions, they smacked their bulky gauntlets on the stone eagle emblazoned over their breastplates before breaking out into sprints toward the Plague Marines. It seemed absurd that giants could move with such amazing celerity.

Barras’ eyes were fixed on the goliath leading the charge. While his brothers mostly fired bolters, he carried a two-handed maul with two heads, each swathed in a powerful disruptor field. Letting out a growl that sounded distorted and wolfish through his helmet speakers, the Marine swung his gigantic hammer and pounded an unsteady Plague Marine square in the chest. The sparking force field around the hammer’s head flashed on impact, amplifying the already inhuman strike to insane levels of strength. The Plague Marine flew backwards, landing and skidding around twenty yards away. Not dwelling on what he had just done, the maul-wielding Marine shouted to his comrades: “Let free the retribution of the Emperor, my brothers! Purge the unclean!”

Unbelievably, the fallen Plague Marine rose again, a crater on his chest, dazed but not nearly incapacitated. It took a few more steps before being engulfed in a searing fireball. Many of the Marines wearing the scorpion heraldry carried flamers, and were using them liberally to submerge their Death Guard foes in infernos. The consuming blazes did little to dismay their shambling targets, and most of the Plague Marines continued firing their bolters and swinging their blades even as the flames scorched their armor and burned away their fetid flesh. Rather than seek their survival, they seemed to welcome death once it was credibly offered to them, as if it were some cherished gift.

One of Barras’ soldiers let out a whoop of deliverance, sparking a chorus of additional supportive yells. With renewed dynamism, the Guardsmen resumed firing volleys, even if it was a weak supplement to the strength and firepower of their godlike saviors.

A small quantity of Plague Marines had died, but more were closing in on the attackers. Methodical salvos of bolter, flamer and plasma fire from the loyalist Marines thrashed the ranks of the Death Guard reinforcements, but few were stopped, and eventually the two forces met. A helmetless heretic, his head resembling a moldering shriveled prune, grappled with the Space Marine commander, a humming chainsword gripped in one tremendous fist. His dark moss-colored armor leaked with an unknown sludge. The Space Marine commander tried to shove him away, but his gauntlet slid clear due to the slimy gunk. The Death Guard warrior lunged, slashing his chainsword across the commander’s shoulder and blood sprayed where the chain found purchase. The commander did not cry out; instead, he slammed his elbow into his opponent’s belly and leapt backward, trouncing his maul onto neck and head. Like the rotted fruit it resembled, the Plague Marine’s head broke open, bone and brain obliterated in an eruption of sopping carnage. The decapitated body fell away as more enemies loomed.

The scene became a festival of massacres, a carnival of blood and brutality. Barras watched as a Space Marine died, an axe plunged into the space beneath his helm, and he fell to the sound of his own gurgling blood. One of his battle-brothers swept up his dead comrade’s bolt pistol and emptied the magazine into the killer. He was instantly set upon by a Traitor Marine carrying a combat knife, which in Barras’ much smaller hands would easily have been a broadsword. The Chaos-corrupted Marine drove the serrated blade into the gap between breastplate and helmet before wrenching it out. He stabbed repeatedly, laughing a sick wet giggle, until the Space Marine collapsed. The heretic was so caught up in his mania he did not even notice the Astartes commander swinging his maul until it landed on the Plague Marine’s back, shattering his spine. The hammer rose and fell over and over, quickly turning the soldier of Chaos into mere pulp and slush.

The battle was even, with the Space Marines winning slightly, but Barras wondered how long that would go on. The Death Guard Marines, though few in number, were only stoppable by extreme use of firepower or overwhelming brute force. In a conflict of pure attrition, the advantage lay with the nigh-invulnerable plague-bearing juggernauts. They were, Barras thought to himself, avatars of the inevitable entropy in the universe, the unpleasant but nevertheless harsh truth that all things, no matter how glorious or precious, would someday collapse and congeal, falling to ruin. Even the Imperium of Man, for all its splendors and righteousness, would at some point vanish from the universe, just as the brightest suns in the galaxy would someday be extinguished….

He was shaken from these heretical thoughts by the rumbling sound of Thunderhawks howling above him, their wing mounted guns blasting away. As the shells landed, the Plague Marines exploded in a series of detonations. With almost stoic passivity, the more distant Death Guard survivors were also torn apart by over-sized battle cannons spewing high-explosive rounds, others shredded by the shrapnel created by the rounds’ shell casings. The aircrafts banked around as they passed overhead, coming in low to the ground. When they landed, they unloaded streams of Space Marines, around twenty in each. From one, an enormous war machine strode clumsily down an exit ramp, roughly thirteen feet tall and just as wide. It moved in thumping, lazy steps, and its arms were weapons: the left was a steel arm capped by a wide chainsaw fist the size of an adult human, and the right was a long cannon with coils along its length that glowed dull blue.

The battle ended soon thereafter. Barras’ men, exhausted and mortified by their brush with certain death, relaxed their discipline and slouched against the walls, some leaning on their firearms. The only thing keeping them warm and energized was the relief of surviving, of having won a gamble with fate and come out the victor. They had earned their rest. Barras felt the urge to join them but stopped when he spotted the Space Marine commander with the maul moving towards him. He snapped to attention, as nervously as he had done in the officers’ academy. He did his best to remain composed, but reflexively blanched at the noisy bluster of servos from the Marine’s armor joints.

The Astartes set aside his maul and with gauntleted hands removed his helm. Beneath it, his head was bald and leathery tan, marred with crisscrossed scars. His eyes were a light and watery blue, blank, unfocused. Barras smiled softly, hoping a relaxed and warm expression would obscure his uneasiness before one of the God-Emperor’s chosen. Of course, he knew the galaxy contained more futile tasks. “I’m Lieutenant Selywn Barras, my lord,” he managed, “and we’re extremely glad to see you…”

“I am Brother-Captain Creon Mindarus,” the Astartes interrupted, “of the Red Scorpions’ Fourth Company. My orders are to purge this quadrant of the planet. Inquisitor Xanthus of the Ordo Malleus informed us that the traitors of the Fourteenth Legion were attempting to summon a powerful daemon, a harbinger of rot and ruin.”

Barras nodded. “Well, it would appear your mission was accomplished.”

“Not yet,” Creon said quickly. “Our orders were to cleanse this planet of Chaos taint, Lieutenant, and for us, that means all who were exposed to the corruption on Ephesos. Your unit has been deployed on the planet for several months, has it not?”

Barras arched an eyebrow. “Y-Yes, my lord, to wipe out the walking dead…”

“A task you did satisfactorily,” Creon replied with a cold monotone. “Yet, it was an error sending your regiment here. Despite its many commendations, you have one inherent flaw: you are mere humans.” He titled his head to one side briefly and clicked his tongue. “Well, most of you, at least. Your regiment has squads of abuhumans, yes?”

“Y-You mean the Ogryns?” Barras stammered. The Imperium of Man believed in the supremacy of humanity over the universe, but it nevertheless utilized near-human creatures in parts of the Imperial Guard. This included the gigantic mutants known as the Ogryns, as loyal as they were big and stupid. They made excellent shock troops, even if their very existence suggested tolerance of genetic mutation, which in turn may have invited spiritual corruption. “My lord, I have nothing to do with…”

The Astartes captain raised a hand to halt the protest. “It is irrelevant. Even without the presence of abhumans among your units, your regiment has been exposed to plagues and poxes your unmodified immune systems could not resist with guaranteed success. Rather than risk allowing you to leave Ephesos and potentially infect others, spreading the Chaos taint, we will have to liquidate your regiment as part of our operations.”

Barras went ashen as the blood drained from his face. His jaw dropped several centimeters and his eyes grew wide. “T-This is wrong! We did our duty!”

“As was appropriate,” Creon responded with indifference. “Nevertheless, you cannot claim direct descent from the Emperor himself, as we can. Even few Astartes chapters truly do.” There was no pride on his lips; he spoke matter-of-factly. “To protect the Emperor’s faithful, we must cull those susceptible to the insidious corruption of Chaos. You have always been told you may give your life for the Emperor; today, you will.”

On instinct, Barras moved to run. Obviously the Astartes was faster. He reached out and clutched Barras’ neck in his gauntleted fingers. The Guardsman struggled in the grip, choking for air. Creon tightened his hold, crunching bone and cartilage with barely a tensing of his muscles. Lifted off the ground, Barras’ feet kicked for solid contact, but soon went limp. The Astartes dropped him to the ground, where he fell with a thud.

By this time, the worn and weakened soldiers of Barras’ unit had noticed the execution of their commander. As they struggled to process what they had witnessed, they failed to notice that the charcoal-clad Space Marines had encircled them–and were now pointing their bolters, flamers, and plasma guns in their direction. Creon made a small motion with his hand. The Marines fired, cutting down the surviving Guardsmen with no mercy.

As las-fire and flame reflected in his blank blue eyes, Creon said: “Purge the unclean.”