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DEATHWATCH 7: City of Ruin

Ian St. Martin

Not a single breath has left my body but in service to the House.

The words echoed through Sai’s head, offered no challenge by the howling of the wind. From the spire’s terrace he beheld the metropolis of Pomarii tumbling out across the plains in a breathtaking expanse of gridlines and hab blocks.

Billions of people lived, toiled and died below him, but all he could see was his mother’s face, and the glacial reserve engraved in her features.

As the lone male heir of House Trigarta, the course of Sai’s existence had been decided and regimented from the day he first drew breath. Of all the opulence and luxury that life within a House of the Navis Nobilite afforded, choice had been a delicacy too rare to taste. While his sisters took to the stars, guiding the fleets of the Imperium, Sai remained cloistered, shut away from anything that might threaten the continuance of the bloodline.

He had sailed through the Sea of Souls to arrive here on Basatani, to be received by the emissaries of House Velon. Sai’s future was decided, an arranged marriage with a daughter of Velon to maintain alliances that had existed before man had first set foot on Basatani, and nearly as long as the Imperium itself. Sai would never shepherd a vessel through the Immaterium. Despite the priceless value of a Navigator’s curse, he was consigned to be little more than a breeder.

He would never even open his eye.

Every beat of my heart has been for the survival of the House, Lady Trigarta had said as Sai departed for Basatani. And now, so must yours. He had excused himself from the pomp of the reception, seeking a rare opportunity to be entirely alone.

But the tension in the city below was palpable even from these heights. War had descended over the entire sector, which was in the grip of a xenos invasion, or so he had been told. Sai had only just arrived when the aliens began their assault. Safe within the system’s core worlds defensive line, Basatani had avoided the bloodshed thus far.

Other than lessons in naval and military history taught to him by his tutors, he had no experience of war, or of any of the myriad xenos races that opposed the Imperium of Man. His life had been insulated from such things, the perils of the galaxy rendered inert on the pages of parchment scrolls and dataslates.

Sai looked up. The terrace and spire were draped in shadow, drawing his gaze to Basatani’s star. The blazing sphere was masked in an eclipse, and a brief smile crept across the youth’s face as he beheld it.

Then his wonder chilled into ice that crept up his spine. He looked closer as klaxons began to wail in the distance. He remembered his study of this world in the long months of his journey…

Basatani did not have any moons.

The eclipse grew darker, casting the spire and all of Pomarii into deeper shadow. The object continued to swell, growing larger, and Sai’s eyes widened as it caught fire.

There was a noise like the sky ripping open. The intense heat of the atmospheric plunge stripped away pieces of debris from the object, which arced downwards on columns of fire. Stone fragments the size of hab towers smashed into the city in shattering explosions. Individual sounds ceased to be. Numberless impacts and the din of destruction swelled and overlapped into a monstrous cacophony like the roaring of a nightmarish ocean. Tremors rocked the spire. Sai grabbed hold of the railing of the terrace and crouched behind it. He shrank against the thunder of explosions as debris rained down, demolishing entire city blocks below.

Sai touched a hand to the elaborate headdress he wore, carved into the image of angels with platinum wings swept protectively over his mutation. His third eye throbbed and pulsed beneath the covering. He peered over the railing upon the city. A swelling cloud of dust from the impacts boiled over the metropolis like churning fog. It rose, billowing and licking at the roots of the central spires but failing to reach their height.

His gaze lifted from the shrouded devastation below, and ice plunged into his veins.

A gargantuan meteor of blazing rock and jagged metal, far larger than anything else that had fallen, broke through the clouds, descending towards Pomarii like the fist of a livid god. Flickering streams of fire from the city’s defence batteries carved ineffectual scars into it, and hasty arrows of fighter craft hurtled out from hangar bays, rising to intercept the looming colossus.

Sai’s breath caught in his throat as the meteor responded. Clouds of ordnance lashed out in all directions, and the fighters blinked away in tiny sunbursts.

This was no meteor. Someone, or something, was controlling it.

It was a ship, and it was not slowing down.

The hulk began to tumble, rolling slowly like a great ocean leviathan as it hurtled towards the city. Fire-wreathed debris continued its hellish rain, obliterating spires and reducing entire city blocks to rubble.

Sai of House Trigarta realised that he was going to die at the top of this spire, on a world he did not know, for a reason he would never understand.

Rodricus Grytt stood in the scarlet light of the Thunderhawk as he was armoured for battle. Robed thralls and servitors surrounded him, anchoring massive plates of ceramite over the Space Marine’s genhanced musculature. The war-plate was the deep black of the void, save for the silver bearing the insignia of the Deathwatch riveted onto his left arm and shoulder. The only thing to hint at his Chapter allegiance was the gold livery of the Imperial Fists on his right pauldron. The jet fist of Dorn was scarred and singed from recent battle, the deepest gouges still stained with the blood of brothers and foes alike.

Grytt rolled his shoulders as the thralls stepped away, the power pack on his back thrumming to life. The servants fell to their knees, offering trembling devotions to appease the spirit of the armour for the haste of its preparation. Grytt ignored them, scratching at the scars that branched over his face before donning his helm.

For a Space Marine, joining the ranks of the Deathwatch was among the highest of honours, worthy of remembrance in the annals of one’s parent Chapter.

For Grytt, it was exile. One that he had imposed upon himself.

Through the visor of his plough-faced helm, Grytt stared at the servo-skull that bobbed before him, the whirring clockwork of its optics pulsing in the gloom. The drone served as his spotter, expanding his view of a battlefield as his Devastator squad rained down the fury of Dorn upon the enemies of mankind.

Grytt blinked, and the skull’s pict feed overlaid his right eye-lens. He breathed in the armour’s stale air, and watched the recording of the battle he had fought mere days ago. He watched himself lead a squad of Imperial Fists through roughly hewn rock tunnels awash with blood and flame, heavy weapons unleashed at point-blank range upon a roaring horde of greenskins.

He watched as his brothers demonstrated the iron discipline and restraint that defined Dorn’s sons as they waged war.

He watched as he himself did not, striking ahead and casting abandon behind. He witnessed his loss of control mar the cohesion of his squad, and he saw his battle-brothers die because of it.

‘Never have I witnessed one so strong display such weakness,’ Grytt remembered the words of Captain Kyradon, now counted amongst the fallen as the vile xenos burned the system to ashes. The words dug into the core of him, taking root with barbs of cruel truth.

Grytt possessed a furious temperament, more in common with his zealous cousins of the Black Templars than that of the Chapter that had once been Legion. In a brotherhood where control was paramount, his recklessness was a mark of shame.

When the Deathwatch summoned him, requesting he join their ranks, Grytt had accepted without question. War’s intoxication had eroded his discipline, and the fight to not drink deep of it was the only battle he had ever lost. In order to atone, he would drown himself in it. He would return to the Imperial Fists tempered and purged of his weakness by the crucible of shadow war, or he would not return at all.

The deck shuddered beneath Grytt’s boots as the gunship landed upon the hangar deck of the Deathwatch frigate Kisertet. The Imperial Fist stepped down the embarkation ramp into the ordered pandemonium of the hangar bay, towards the figure that awaited him.

Like Grytt, the warrior was a Space Marine of the Deathwatch, his black armour edged in blue and etched with esoteric runes. A crystalline hood rose behind his head, crackling faintly with unnatural energies. The heraldry of the Silver Skulls displayed his origins, while his wargear marked him as a Librarian.

‘Brother Grytt,’ said the psyker, his tone soft for a Space Marine. ‘I am Adomar. You have arrived in haste, but we cannot tarry here. Kill Team Almuta gathers. We must join them.’

Grytt removed his helm again with a gasp of equalising air pressure, and carried it in the crook of his arm as he followed Adomar. The servo-skull whirred as it floated at his shoulder.

‘Tell me,’ asked Grytt, as the two Space Marines departed the bustle of rushing auxiliaries and hangar crew, walking through the darkened corridors of the Kisertet. ‘Have you crusaded amongst the Deathwatch long?’

‘No,’ replied Adomar, his steps silent compared to Grytt’s hulking gait. ‘I am a replacement for their fallen, as are you.’

‘This invasion has spilled much noble blood,’ said Grytt. ‘My company has been engaged with the greenskins assailing these worlds for weeks. My boarding party had only just returned from one of their wretched vessels when I was seconded here.’

‘It is an honour to serve,’ said Adomar. ‘Your experience with these orks will do us credit in the strife ahead.’

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