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Execution – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Execution

Rachel Harrison

The sky screams. The ground underfoot screams. In the distance, men and women scream too. The noise is catastrophic, underpinned by the thunder of artillery and the crack of the void shields protecting the rebel-held fortress of Morne. They are the sounds of a siege.

A siege that is failing.

Commissar Severina Raine ignores it all. She’s focused on the man in front of her. Captain Tevar Lun of the 11th Antari Rifles stands with his lasgun held loose at his side. His grey eyes are locked on hers, unflinching.

It’s admirable, considering her bolt pistol is pointed at his face.

‘You are refusing your orders,’ Raine says coldly.

Lun puts down his rifle, leaning it against the rough wall of the earthworks. The stock of his gun and his flak armour are scored with kill-markings and prayers carved in spiked Antari script. White scratches against the grey-and-green camouflage plates.

‘I will not do it,’ he says. ‘Not my brothers. Not my sisters.’

Lun’s eyes flicker to the fortress walls. The wall-mounted guns are firing into the dawn sky, tracking after a flight of Valkyrie gunships that pull up and away, tearing holes in the clouds.

‘Those guns are built to kill tanks and aircraft,’ he says. ‘They turned Keld and his squad to mist.’

Raine saw it too. Not just that, she smelled it on the wind. Rich iron in the cold air. The rebels had disengaged the overrides on the guns and used them that way as a show of force. It was a show of something else as well.

Arrogance.

‘Keld was foolish, and slow,’ she says. ‘Be neither, and the Emperor will see us across. I will see us across.’

It’s his one chance. A chance she would not give to most of the guardsmen serving with her. She extends it to Tevar Lun because of what he is. A clear head. A faithful heart. A captain respected by all of the squads under his command.

But Tevar Lun doesn’t take the chance he’s offered. He shakes his head instead.

‘What you ask of us,’ he says, ‘it’s suicide.’

There’s a break in the noise of the artillery, as if the world is waiting for her reply. Raine lets out a slow breath. Her aim doesn’t waver.

‘That is your mistake,’ Raine says. ‘You think that I am asking.’

And without pause, without doubt, she pulls the trigger. The report of the bolt pistol is a loud, flat bang. Blood spatters her face. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. The blood is hers to bear. As Lun’s body collapses, Raine hears the slow release of breath from the other Antari standing around her. The flexing of gloved fingers. A snatch of whispered prayer. Then the artillery starts up again. Compared to that quiet moment, it almost seems a relief.

Raine looks at each of them in turn. At Sergeant Daven Wyck and his Wyldfolk, twenty-five strong. At Lydia Zane and the medic, Nuria Lye. At the storm trooper captain, Andren Fel, and his squad of four. None of them look away, even as their captain’s blood soaks the ground at their feet. He made them unflinching too. She is thankful for that.

‘We have our orders,’ she shouts over the noise. ‘We know what needs to be done.’

They all nod, still not looking away. That’s how Raine catches the open resentment in some of those grey Antari eyes. First Wyck, who is no surprise, and hardly needs more reason. He resents her because she is not of Antar, though he masks it with careful words. She expects it from him, but this time he isn’t alone. It’s Varn, too. The big man is breathing hard through his teeth, his fire-scarred hands clenched into fists. The third is Lydia Zane. She was standing close to Lun when he was shot. The others keep a superstitious distance from her. From her pale-veined skin and her crown of cables, and her eyes that see even when they are closed. Zane’s face doesn’t change, but she puts her hand to her throat. To where her captain’s blood has dashed across it. Raine knows that the next moments are critical. That she must turn that resentment against the enemy, against the fortress, or they will fail here and now.

She also knows that if it comes down to it, she will bear more Antari blood to get it done.

‘The orders that Captain Lun refused are not just my orders,’ she says. ‘They are the orders of Lord-General Serek. They are the orders of High Command.’

She looks at Wyck, then Varn, then Zane.

‘Above all, they are the orders of the Emperor himself.’

There is no change in Wyck or Zane, but Varn blinks. His face drains of colour. Raine hears a muttered prayer from the group.

‘So it is that I speak for the Emperor,’ Raine says. ‘Refuse me, and you refuse Him.’

Zane glances down at her bloody fingertips. Wyck shifts his weight. Around them, the trench network stretches for miles. More than half of the regiment has been deployed outside the fortress of Morne. Over three thousand Antari souls. Infantry, mechanised and artillery. They are not alone, either. The Kavrone 21st took heavy losses recapturing the city of Thadar, but they have brought everything they have left in support of the Antari. Tracks and tank-frames rattle. Petro-chem engines roar. Mortars fire. The sky is lit with explosions. A second sunrise over the world of Drast, and the fortress on the hill. Raine tightens her fingers around the grip of her bolt pistol.

‘Will you refuse?’ she says.

There is a solid, shouted chorus of ‘No, commissar,’ from every soldier in the trench. It is loudest from Varn, who has his head bowed now, penitent. Zane and Wyck are less so, but they say the words like everyone else. That sits fine with Severina Raine. She doesn’t care about their hatred, as long as they obey. Her finger moves away from her pistol’s trigger.

‘We will open the way for our forces to take the fortress,’ Raine says. ‘To break it.’

The combat engineer Crys bares her teeth in a smile. It’s a white stripe in her bloody face.

‘Aye, commissar,’ she says.

The Antari shift. Their mood is turning. Their conviction growing.

‘The rebels in that fortress think that this noise they make is thunder,’ Raine says. ‘But they have heard nothing of the Antari Rifles.’

They all salute her, arms snapping up to make the sign of the aquila.

‘In His name!’ Raine cries.

And it isn’t just Crys that answers, it’s every soldier in the trench.

‘In His name!’ they shout over the roar of the guns.

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A Black Library Publication

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Fortress illustration by Ahmed Aldoori.

Execution © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Execution, 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.
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ISBN: 978-1-78572-825-9

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