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DEATHWATCH 5: DEADHENGE

Justin D Hill

I

Brother Ennox Sorrlock lay wounded in the panelled reading room of Planetary Governor Ajax Finne’s personal library. His helmet rang with the dying shouts of his squad, and through the hazed eye lens of his Mark VIII ‘Errant’ armour he saw the darting shapes of the eldar: all blades and skin, and thin, pale, grasping fingers.

He fired three wild shots. His bolter magazine flashed empty. His secondary heart was failing and his breath came in long gulps. His arms were weakening. He tried to reach a fresh magazine, but as he did so a sickle blade stabbed down at his throat. He caught the hand, almost by instinct, dragged the eldar warrior in close, found his combat knife and drove it deep into its body, before throwing the corpse aside. The exertion left him weaker than before, but he gritted his teeth against the pain, flexed his muscles and tried again for the magazine.

‘Brother Sorrlock!’ a voice rang out in his vox-link.

He tried to answer, but could not make a noise.

‘Sorrlock!’ the voice came again. It was Brother Lenhk.

‘Leave me...’ Sorrlock tried to say, but all that came from his lips was a froth of blood and spittle. He looked about. The fight had moved on, and all around him were the enemy dead, lying in deep piles. Mixed in with the dead were leather-bound volumes in disorganised heaps, scraps of singed paper in the spreading pools of blood, much of it his own.

Warning runes flashed in his helmet: secondary heart collapse, liver failure, blood loss critical, too severe even for his Larraman cells to staunch. Sorrlock found a krak grenade and tried to set the charge, but his fingers were clumsy, and he couldn’t see properly anymore. He was trying to toss it towards his enemies when, from the corridor leading towards the library chamber, there was a flash of bolter fire. The screams and shouts of xenos. The vivid gout of promethium flames.

‘I’ve found him!’ he heard Lenkh call over the vox.

‘Leave me,’ Sorrlock tried to say again. Warning runes flashed inside his helmet. His consciousness faltered. He felt himself being dragged backwards.

‘Cover me!’ Lenhk was shouting to Renz, the other surviving member of the squad.

‘Covering.’

‘We have him,’ Lenkh voxed the Stormraven pilot. ‘Get us out of here!’

Flames filled the chamber again. More xenos screams and howls.

‘Coming in,’ the pilot voxed.

Sorrlock could hear the whirring of the console, the repetitive beep of the homing beacon through the pilot’s signals as their Stormraven gunship circled, looking for a good place to land.

‘I have Sorrlock,’ Lenhk voxed.

The pilot’s voice crackled back. ‘And the rest of the squad?’

‘Dead,’ Lenhk shouted. ‘Now, get us out of here!’

Then they were out into the open. Sorrlock saw the twin yellow lights of the Stormraven, descending steeply through the rain. It was the last thing he saw before his vision faded, but he heard a sudden roar as missiles streaked overhead. He felt the explosion, but it came to him only as a dim and distant sound.

There was the whine of the gunship, the grate of his power armour against the ramp as he was dragged into the hold. The Stormraven was already lifting.

Something was clinging to the hull. He could hear it scraping to get inside.

‘The others are lost?’ a new voice said.

‘Affirmative,’ Lenkh said.

‘All of them?’

‘Yes.’

Someone was kneeling at Sorrlock’s side. For a moment he was able to see clearly. It was an Apothecary with black hair and a ragged scar across his neck. His blue-lit augmetic eyes looked down at Sorrlock.

‘Throne,’ the Apothecary hissed. ‘What did this to him?’

‘Xenos,’ Lenkh said.

Sorrlock felt his power armour being stripped away, a hand at his neck. ‘His gene-seed is compromised,’ the Apothecary reported.

The words cut through his pain. Sorrlock felt intense shame. Not only had he led seven battle-brothers to their deaths, but now he could not even pass on his genetic legacy to the Chapter.

As the Stormraven began to climb through the rain clouds, the vox-link crackled. There was a whisper in his ear.

‘Brothers,’ a voice said. It felt like a dream, but the voice was so real and familiar that it roused Sorrlock for a moment. ‘Brothers, don’t leave me here…’ the voice came again.

The accent was Grimmack’s.

Sorrlock moaned. He tried to tell them to go back, that they had left a brother behind, but he was unable to speak.

‘Inserting needle,’ the Apothecary’s voice came.

‘No!’ Sorrlock tried to say, but the drugs were spreading cool within his veins. They removed all the pain, but there were things worse than pain.

Things like failure and defeat.

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