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Death’s Toll - Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Death’s Toll

Jon Flindall

It began with a crunching impact like a drill striking a rock face. Even as the sound died away, the grinding of relentless metal teeth echoed through the cargo vault. It was overlaid by a searing hiss that escalated as white-hot circles formed in the exterior bulkhead. The two swirling rings seemed like the mesmeric eyes of some abyssal horror. Then the cutting torches abruptly ceased, revealing the drill-toothed mouths of a pair of assault craft.

Hatches slammed open as the room stopped shaking.

At the first crashing sound of their approach, the officials had scrambled behind the packing crate they had been using as a low table in their hideout. The half-light of the chamber’s emergency lighting picked out a dozen towering figures in bulky armour storming into the cargo vault, trailing cloaks of vapour behind them. They moved with unnatural speed, their footfalls ringing like leaden bells against the plasteel decking as they secured the room’s exits. Their helms and weapons tracked back and forth, ignoring the cowering dignitaries. Their eye-lenses glowed a dull red.

Marahn released the breath he had taken before the warriors arrived.

Space Marines. The Angels of Death.

‘We need to talk to them,’ hissed Yolcii, rising to stand beside him. Dispassion’s former high priest was clutching her mitre to her chest. ‘We have to tell them what we need.’

Marahn climbed to his feet, his legs weak. ‘You make it sound easy,’ he said. His mind raced. Now that the Space Marines were finally here, he could reclaim his family’s holdings and get out of the worker’s hab he’d been billeted in. Surely he just had to tell them where the t’au were and the rest would follow…

Two of the Emperor’s Angels approached the table with its greasy amasec glasses and forgotten bowls of gruel. They were a far cry from the magnificent heroes Marahn had read about as a child – they were huge, clad in battle-scarred armour that creaked with the sound of servos as they walked. One of the warriors wore plate of dried-blood red and scuffed black. The other was all in black, the face plate of his helmet a snarling death’s head.

‘You sent the message?’ The skull-faced warrior’s amplified voice was as cold as the void outside as his helm’s baleful glare swept across the three cowed humans. Eustace coughed, the beads of her headdress swinging. ‘That was me, lord. I was – I am – Dispassion’s Telepathica overseer. But these other local leaders helped to–’

‘You said the xenos military guarded the port,’ the warrior interrupted. ‘Do they have forces elsewhere?’

‘My… my lord, the aliens have infested the command hub at the centre of the planet. Their engineers, their leaders, they all gather there.’

‘Their soldiers?’

‘I-I don’t… I am not sure, lord,’ she stuttered nervously.

‘Calm yourselves,’ said the other Space Marine. ‘I am Sergeant Caliden of the Iron Lords Third Company. This is honoured Chaplain Endarcha.’ Caliden looked at Yolcii and Marahn in turn. ‘You others, do you know of places where the t’au soldiery can usually be found?’

Marahn swallowed his fear. This was his chance to make himself useful. ‘There is a standing force who guard the central hub building,’ he said. ‘Soldiers of their “fire caste”, perhaps thirty of them at any time.’

The sergeant turned to Marahn. ‘Good. Are there defences between here and there?’

Marahn pictured the route. ‘No, there are no fixed checkpoints apart from at the hub itself. The aliens don’t have the numbers to watch everywhere at once. Sometimes their patrols move through the fissure galleries – the transit corridors that connect the fissures – but they rarely check the fissures themselves.’ He tried to think what would be useful to the Space Marines. ‘Some of the fissures are miles long, punctuated by open mineshafts, and they twist and turn through Dispassion’s rock. There are few places where you can see more than a hundred yards ahead.’

‘You know this planet’s construction well,’ said the Chaplain.

Unnerved by the Space Marine’s crimson gaze, Marahn looked away. ‘Perhaps, lord. I’m Gordus Marahn, maintenance master. I used to command the work crews that keep this place running.’ He nervously raised the symbol of his office, which hung about his neck on a chain – an amulet in the shape of an eagle with a cog-pick clutched in its talons. He tried to meet the Chaplain’s gaze again and failed. The tarnished bone that surmounted his face plate looked all too real, and Marahn wondered whether it had belonged to one of the Space Marine’s victims or one of his brothers.

Marahn heard the click of a vox-connection as Caliden spoke to the Chaplain. With a grunt and a pneumatic hiss Chaplain Endarcha removed his helm.

‘You have schematics?’ he asked.

Marahn stared. The Chaplain’s face was… wrong somehow. His jaw was heavy, his neck corded with muscle. Dark eyes glared from flesh that seemed made of scar tissue, every line recalling a brutal conflict. Even his brow seemed bluntly aggressive. It was little better than the fearsome helmet. Were all the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes this… inhuman?

‘Schematics?’ repeated the Chaplain.

Marahn had hoped to use the fissure blueprints as a bargaining tool, keeping them to himself until the Space Marines had at least retaken his apartments in the outer cloister. That seemed an impossibility now.

‘Of course,’ he said, handing over his data-slate.

Endarcha passed it to Caliden, who drew a cable from a panel on his vambrace and connected it to its port.

The sergeant turned from the data-slate as its contents streamed across his helm’s heads-up display. ‘Propitious, Master Marahn.’ He returned the data-slate and his vox clicked. Several others amongst the Iron Lords formed up behind the Chaplain and sergeant – Marahn assumed they were discussing their plan of attack.

Eustace straightened her braids, composing herself as she drew Marahn away from the gathered warriors. ‘Will you talk to them, Gordus? You’ve been useful. Once the aliens are gone, it would speed things up immeasurably if the Space Marines confirmed our rule was legitimate.’

Marahn had been present for the planetary governor’s last public appearance, when he confirmed Dispassion was to be a protectorate of the T’au Empire. Since then, no one had seen him – the rumour was that he had been taken to one of the aliens’ re-education facilities. And his empty throne presented an opportunity…

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