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Sergeant Arion,
Ravenwing

The engine screams in protest as the bike hits the base of the steep incline. Dropping down through the gears, my battle-brothers and I reach the top of the ridge and I signal a halt so we can get our bearings and assess the landscape from our new vantage point.

I remove the mag-locked auspex from my belt and begin to scan the immediate area for life forms. The unit pings intermittently and I adjust the settings to filter out the small fauna native to this world.

Behind me, Brother Arias is performing a visual assessment of the locale with his magnoculars while Brother Gethel has dismounted his bike and is patrolling our perimeter in case the enemy is invoking dark magicks that shield them from our instruments. They both do this as if by rote, belying the fact that we have only been operating as a unit for a few short months. I have served my Chapter for more than a century and in all that time I have commanded very few Space Marines with the dedication and fervour of Arias and Gethel.

My first taste of command came twenty-three years into my service to the Chapter. Since my elevation from the Scout Company I had served under Sergeant Lammas in Fourth Company’s Third Squad and in all that time we had remained intact, a charmed existence in a universe where war is everything.

Until Mormathathrax.

The greenskin warlord, Mashskull the Unsane, had unleashed his forces on the Dark Angels recruitment world and the Chapter Master had received a distress call from our outpost there requesting reinforcements to stem the green tide. With the rest of the Chapter engaged on other battlefronts, the call came to the Vinco Redemptor to divert from its reinforcement mission and take Fourth Company to Mormathathrax to bolster the skeleton force there.

But we were too late.

Delays in the warp cost us dearly and it was three Terran years before we would arrive in-system. Imperial Guard forces had barely held on in that time but Chaplain Phaldor and his honour guard had been wiped out by the warlord himself, and the ork tyrant had taken to wearing the Chaplain’s shoulder pads and carrying his crozius arcanum into battle. Stricken by this affront to the Chapter’s honour, Company Master Fraciel ordered the entire company onto Mormathathrax to hunt down and kill Mashskull. The hunt was swift and bloody but for every Dark Angel lost at the hand of the vile xenos, a thousand orks were slain.

The tyrant was finally cornered in a citadel in the planetary capital and the Chapter Master duelled with the massive brute while the remainder of the company held the rest of the greenskin horde at bay. For a day and a night, Fraciel fought the monstrosity until finally, at dawn’s first light, the Chapter Master claimed the alien’s scalp. But despite the Chapter’s honour being restored, the cost to the company was huge. Of the hundred Dark Angels who made planetfall, only twenty-seven made it back to the Vinco Redemptor and many squads had been wiped out entirely.

Third Squad’s charmed existence had lasted right until the final hour of the battle but, at the very last, the orks concentrated their numbers on the smaller side gate to the citadel we had been defending, and gradually our numbers had been whittled down until only Sergeant Lammas and I remained standing, shoulder to shoulder.

With the corpses of the fallen damming the approach to the gate, one of the tyrant’s lieutenants broke through and engaged us both in hand-to-hand combat. Though we fought valiantly, the sergeant’s spine was crushed over the ork’s knee and, when I was finally able to land the killing blow with Lammas’s chainsword, in its death throes the xenos hulk almost crushed the life from me.

Almost.

When the Apothecaries found me, my sus-an membrane had kicked in and my recovery had already begun. It would be three weeks before I regained consciousness and another month before I was considered battle-ready, but by that time Fourth Company had started rebuilding and, in recognition of the part I played in the Mormathathrax campaign, I was promoted to sergeant of the newly bolstered Third Squad.

Despite the relative inexperience of the new influx to Third Squad, we regained our charmed existence. The nine Scouts presented to me on board the Vinco Redemptor barely two months after the slaying of Mashskull would all fight alongside me for the next three decades and grow into fine examples of Dark Angels.

Until the Harbinger of Woe.

A routine patrol of the outer reaches of the Merro subsector picked up a vessel translating into real space on their long-range auspexes. The Dark Angels strike cruiser Salvation was sent to investigate and as it got closer to the newly warp-emerged craft, two things became apparent: not only was the vessel enormous – a space hulk – but it was showing massive signs of life.

Too vast for the Salvation’s weapons arrays to do more than scratch the hull, the only way to deal with it before it reached the inhabited worlds of Merro was to board the craft and eliminate whatever was on board. With the Dark Angels legendary First Company, the Deathwing, fighting on the other side of the Imperium and no other Space Marine Chapters within range to intercept the hulk quickly, Fraciel made the bold decision to teleport Fourth Company aboard the craft, by now identified as the Harbinger of Woe.

Of all the known life forms in the Imperium, none are as insidious as the tyranids. Relentless in their advance through the worlds of mankind, the tyranids are a contradiction given form, continually destroying to create. Entire worlds and planetary systems are left as barren husks in their wake, the raw DNA and lifestuff consumed so that the hive mind can transform and reappropriate it to create new bioforms, more efficient killing machines that can begin anew the cycle of death and life. Such is their fearsome reputation among the Adeptus Astartes that even the most long-lived veteran would think long and hard before engaging this particular xenos in battle, many bearing the scars from previous encounters.

When we teleported aboard the Harbinger of Woe that day, each and every Dark Angel was fully prepared to face the tyranids but not a single one of them hoped that would be the case once we rematerialised on board the hulk.

It was three seconds before the first Dark Angels fatality.

The teleportation had been surprisingly accurate and the entire company had been deposited in the same chamber of the craft. Unfortunately, that meant the tyranids had us all in one place and could pick us off one by one. The Devastators were the first to fall and within a minute of teleporting aboard not a single Space Marine armed with a heavy weapon was left alive. Within five minutes, every Dark Angel carrying a flamer had fallen to the chittering hordes and before the first ten minutes of the battle were through, Fraciel and I were the only two ranking Dark Angels left standing. Many Imperial scholars and those within the Magos Biologis will tell you that the tyranids are an unthinking race, a life form that operates purely on impulse, but on the basis of my many encounters with the vile xenos I know the opposite to be true. Although an individual tyranid is a simple opponent, acting only on its most basic instincts, the hive mind is a truly fearsome proposition and one that is more than capable of matching wits with even the finest the Adeptus Astartes has to offer. As we were finding, to our peril.

Those of us left standing were already bearing the marks of our encounter – a puckered scar runs along the length of my thigh as a souvenir of that day – and the tyranids were beginning to pen us in. Pushed back against the bulkhead, Fraciel was barking orders, attempting to regroup the survivors and begin a counter-attack. Laying down covering fire with my bolter, I crossed the distance between us and took up position alongside him.

‘Arion, we’re going to hold them here. Take these.’ He reached down to his thigh and removed a webslung pack with his left hand. It was only then that I noticed that he’d lost the other to the tyranids; such was the tenacity and prowess of the man that the loss of a hand had not affected his ability to fight in the slightest.

‘Melta bombs. If the teleportation calculations were correct then the realspace engines are two chambers back. Our only chance is to blow them and take out the rest of the hulk in the chain reaction. Plant these and then teleport out. We’ll buy you enough time to get the job done.’

Fraciel was a taciturn and straightforward character and in all the years I served under him, those final words were the most he had ever spoken to me.

I nodded and, picking up a fallen heavy flamer, began to burn my way through the seething mass, the bright orange flames lighting my way through the darkness. Bodies, both Space Marine and tyranid, littered the floor and progress was slow as I incinerated my way through to the next chamber. All attention focused on my surviving battle-brothers, the tyranids had left the next room unguarded and within minutes I was in the engine house planting timed charges.

In my entire time as a Dark Angel I have only ever once disobeyed a direct order from a Company Master. This was that one occasion.

As expected, when I returned to the chamber into which we had teleported, Fraciel and the few surviving Dark Angels had formed a circle in the centre and were in danger of being overwhelmed. I ignited the flamer and before me tyranids unleashed death howls as their chitinous hides caught fire and their flesh began to pucker and boil. Another Dark Angel beside Fraciel succumbed to the xenos assault, leaving only four of us against what felt like a whole hive fleet. More of the xenos withered under my flamer’s attention and a path towards Fraciel’s position opened up.

Another of the battle-brothers alongside the Company Master fell.

The rampant tyranids now began to divert their attention and more and more of them converged on me. The hive mind had been tactically astute taking out the heavy flamers during the initial stages of the attack, as every time I depressed the ignition stud, two or three of the alien beasts were engulfed in an inferno.

The last Dark Angel beside Fraciel died, decapitated by a hormagaunt’s claw.

Dozens more tyranids roasted, those already engulfed thrashing about mindlessly and setting light to others. Crazed shadows flickered on the walls of the chamber and a great collective wail went up from the dying horde.

Fraciel was almost within reach when the lictor’s claw impaled him.

The Company Master slumped to his knees, his one remaining hand losing grip of his bolt pistol. Within seconds the horde was upon him. I began to scream in defiance but my plaintive wail was drowned out by the sound of the melta bombs detonating, heralding the destruction of the Harbinger of Woe.

Six weeks later I woke up in the apothecarion on board Salvation.

In spite of the wounds I suffered in the explosion, I once more had my sus-an membrane to thank for saving my life. Mere hours after the destruction of the hulk, Salvation picked up the automated distress beacon in my power armour and my unconscious form was brought aboard. This time, I wasn’t just the sole survivor of my squad – I was the sole survivor of my entire company, though I garnered some comfort from the fact that they had all died fighting on board the Harbinger of Woe rather than in the explosion.

Towards the end of my recuperation, Interrogator-Chaplain Seraphicus came to see me in the apothecarion. I fully expected him to tell me that a new Third Squad had been selected for me from among the ranks of the Scouts and were waiting for me to lead them into glorious battle. That wasn’t to be the case.

‘A place has opened up in the Ravenwing and we have need of an experienced sergeant. What say you, Arion? Will you don the black and spiral yet further towards the inner circle?’

‘I’m surprised you even asked. It would be a great honour to take my place in the esteemed Second Company.’

The Chaplain smiled and nodded his approval before taking his leave. He stopped on the threshold of the apothecarion and turned back to me.

‘This is the second time you’ve been the sole survivor of your squad, isn’t it, sergeant?’

‘It is, Interrogator-Chaplain Seraphicus. I cannot explain it and I am too much of a realist to put it down to something as random and intangible as mere luck.’

‘Perhaps the Lion and the Emperor have a plan for you after all.’

The beeping of the auspex rouses me from my reminiscences. Life signs, weak but only six kilometres north of our current position. I turn to issue orders to Arias and Gethel but they are already aboard their bikes, and revving the engines.

Maintaining the high vantage point along the ridge, we gun along in single file, the lone set of tracks making it impossible for an enemy to judge our numbers should anybody be following us. Despite the rough terrain, a Space Marine bike is a hardy vehicle and even bouncing over rocks and rents in the earth is capable of near top speeds. Even at close to two hundred kilometres per hour my enhanced senses allow me to take in my surroundings with almost total recall and I filter out the greens and browns of the tree canopies far below, seeking out other colours that may give away the enemy position.

There. A flash of crimson for the briefest of moments. A pauldron or vambrace. Certainly power armour and certainly hostile.

I glance behind me and both Arias and Gethel acknowledge the sighting but none of us stop, or even slow down. The engine noise and dust cloud thrown up by the bikes mean the enemy know we’re here, but they don’t yet know we’ve spotted them and that information may yet prove crucial in the coming engagement.

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