Contents

Cover

Deathwatch: Swordwind – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Deathwatch:
Swordwind

Ian St. Martin

Screaming fire hurls me into eternal night. Silence swallows the flames as the boarding torpedo darts through the void, dark iron and ceramite against the infinite desert that is at once nothing, and everything.

Our shipmaster slips in with audacious grace to knife us into the xenos vessel of our target, trading broadsides with migraine-bright energy weapons. She loses most of her port side getting this close, and by the time she breaks off she trails fire and atmosphere from a thousand points. Servants of the Holy Ordos stream into the void as decks blow apart, tumbling away to suffocate alone in the dark.

It is inconsequential. Billions have died; a few thousand more are beneath notice. They are as expendable as I am, a fact I accept without rancour.

Our quarry has guided its foul kindred through the razing of thirteen Imperial worlds, leaving nothing but corpses in their wake. Our pursuit fleet engages them over the ashes of the thirteenth planet. We have never got this close, and will never get another chance. Four kill-teams are dispatched to take the target’s head.

Mine is among a shoal of torpedoes hurtling towards the alien warship. Most, loaded with arcane ordnance of the Inquisition’s design, detonate short of the craft, releasing shrouds of null-field particles designed to disrupt psychic ability.

In the pod’s ochre light, I regard the ebon giants within. We are indistinguishable in sable ceramite armour but for a shoulder pauldron of each warrior’s native brotherhood.

Ero repeats the operations order and his guiding intent. Wasted words. We have all had extensive briefings, hypnotic preparations, repeated drills through mock-ups of what we believe we will find inside. We have pored over data, learned their disposition, pulled apart their corpses to study their anatomy. We have killed them on world, moon and between the stars. We are as ready as we can be.

Apothecary Cornac sits beside our commander, his Death Spectres Chapter mark contrasting with the golden iconography of Ero’s Imperial Fists. He cycles through the tools of the reductor bolted to his arm. The whining drills set my teeth on edge, a reminder of the almost certainty that we will return with fewer operators than we began with, if any return at all.

The Wolf is singing. The lamentable bastard always sings during insertion, and I have long since resigned his howling to my awareness’s periphery.

I glance at Sobor, silent and focused as I am. It was providence that saw us, both Mortifactors, seconded together. To serve within the same kill-team rarer still. A veteran of countless crusades, he has anchored me through our silent wars.

The ident-runes for two of the kill-teams blink out. Dead before contact.

Ero’s vox clicks. ‘Orders changed,’ he says. ‘We are realigning as primary assault element, acquisition and destruction of Primary Target One. Emperor guide our hand.’

I open my eyes, the memory clinging behind them as my senses embrace the now. I stand in an umbilical of interlocked iron discs, freezing and thick with the scorched metal scent of the void. Behind me is the Crystal Saint, of the Inquisition’s Ordo Xenos. Before me the Endless Night, system monitor frigate of the Mortifactors Chapter.

My Chapter.

The umbilical is silent. I am alone with what I carry from duties past to future. My hold tightens on two items. I rise and move forward. My service to the Deathwatch is ended.

We barely make egress from the pod before the xenos are upon us. One might mistake them for human from a distance, but their movements put the lie to the thought. Inhumanly tall and slender, the eldar pirouette through our bolter fire, their weapons lashing us with gales of monomolecular shuriken that part ceramite like flesh.

The eldar close into melee. We advance, leveraging our strength against their speed. We must be the swift spear-tip plunged into their throat. Faltering will doom us all.

Five Mortifactors command the Endless Night. They incline their heads in deference to their kindred, but remain silent as the frigate follows the Sundered Path, the trail of death and wreckage marking Leviathan’s march to Posul, from the system’s edge. The hull shivers as we plough through clouds of iron and wreckage.

I have not released what I carry. It is my charge alone; I will bear it the rest of the way as we approach the planet of my birth.

The Wolf is dying. His head thrashes, hanging by sinew as Cornac fights to stabilise him within our defensive circle. Aspirated blood sprays from his lips between Fenrisian curses.

Cornac cannot save him, and instead seeks to save his legacy. He locks the Wolf’s head to the deck, punching the reductor into his throat to tear out the progenoid. We do not have time to wait until he dies.

The Wolf calms once Cornac finishes, making peace with his end. I press a grenade into the hand he has left, and move on.

We do not get far before the crump of the detonation. He will never feel the winds of his birth world again.

Click here to buy Deathwatch: Swordwind.

A Black Library Publication

Published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Filipe Pagliuso.

Deathwatch: Swordwind © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2016. Deathwatch: Swordwind, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-347-6

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.