Contents

Cover

Martyr’s End – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Martyr’s End

By Alec Worley

It was like dancing with a wild animal. Her partner was a beast of noise and steel almost as tall as she. Its whizzing fangs were a hurricane. The purity seals stamped from tip to pommel were medals from a lifetime of shared adventure.

She twirled the colossal weapon, savouring its thunder. A brief snarl as it cleaved another sapling of meat and bone, then on again it roared, spitting blood and smoke. She spiralled after it, her armoured body sweeping perilously close to those whirring teeth, fearless as she guided the blade towards its next meal. Where the weapon led, she followed, breathless with delight.

Her streamlined power armour made the Eviscerator feel absurdly light in her hands. The bodyglove of servo-muscle and sensor relays she wore beneath her ceramite lent her a strength that felt like an everlasting miracle. Another xenos savage lunged at her, its serrated beak snapping at her face. She swept her attacker in half, and on she whirled. In days past, back when she was armoured in nothing but the crimson rags of the penitent, the shuddering weight of her chainsword would stitch agony into her shoulders. How she had welcomed that torment, let it feed her rage the way kindling fuels a fire. She had let her foes scream on her behalf.

Another spindly reptilian spun to face her, yellow eyes glaring, hair a thicket of rattling quills. She coiled, tightening like a spring, as the xenos threw out its spindly rifle in the futile hope of halting its execution. The chainsword came down in a guillotine stroke. She paused to let the blade feed. Dark green blood churned, washing her gauntlets up to the elbows, warming her cheeks. Nothing else moved in her periphery as she spun back into a ready position. The monster in her hands growled like an empty belly.

Blood dripped from Sister Adamanthea’s lashes as she sought another foe. She saw nothing left but a harvest of limbs and strewn viscera glistening along the shallow canyon. The sun strained to see through a haze of dust and ash, the miasma veiling a distant, glowing pattern of blue and yellow tracer fire. The endless volleys sounded like the burble of insects from up here, though the canyon still trembled with the boom of munitions. The tremors shook the banks of ash either side of the gulley until the air smoked with powder.

Adamanthea’s synthetic roar reverberated through the laud hailer fitted to her gorget, the device plugged into the augmetics that replaced her ruined larynx:

‘Is that all you have for us?’

Though her metallic voice rang like drawn steel, her words sounded more like a plea. Her surviving Dominions looked up at her, startled. She felt her body sag once more inside her armour, until it felt as though it were the only thing keeping her standing. The baking air stifled her once again.

She snorted and spat a wad of blackened phlegm at the xenos’ remains. They had descended like startled bats, a tide pouring over a shelf of black rock. Their ferocious ambush was a welcome change from the tactics of their masters, scurrying xenos cowards who favoured punishing volleys of plasma from as far away as possible. They had robbed Adamanthea of at least twenty Dominions in the past ten days alone. White-blue bolts would strike out of nowhere, lancing the lenses in their visors or joints in their armour, blowing skulls and bodies apart. And those damned drones. God-Emperor curse those blasphemous automatons, which seemed to throw themselves into the path of every volley, denying Adamanthea her prey.

Canoness Lydia had assured her that it would take only a few days to purge the colony. Adamanthea had been leading hunting missions for over thirty days now, endless sorties prowling the flanks in search of xenos walkers. Since undergoing the Rites of Restitution, her arms, armour and name officially restored, she had carried out the Emperor’s will across several warzones. Those missions had resulted in swift, exultant victories, the troops inspired by her presence. For was she not a Viventem Miraculum, a living symbol of the Emperor’s will? Was she not the Repentia who had achieved the impossible by surviving her penance and earning forgiveness?

Adamanthea grimaced.

Iron clanked upon ceramite as her Dominions regrouped, hefting their meltas, visors clamped shut against the airborne ash. There were eight of them left. One of them kneeled to bestow a swift obsequy over their only loss. A more dignified end than most are afforded, thought Adamanthea. These past few weeks had been a carnival of blood and shredded flesh, of bodies blown inside out by molten plasma, every casualty offering some fresh variety of horror. Broken fingers, coils of offal, staring faces, all trodden underfoot.

The canoness had apologised for assigning her a squad so young for a mission of such importance. Though trained from girlhood and selected as Dominions for their bullish aggression, none among them had spent more than a year out of the convent. She reminded Adamanthea that the smell of the battlefield alone had a way of demoralising the inexperienced. The Viventem Miraculum must set them an inspirational example.

Adamanthea raised her Eviscerator in awkward salute.

‘We are His blade.’ Her metallic voice trembled. ‘We are His will.’

The Battle Sisters responded in perfect synch, voices bright with obedience. ‘And we shall not suffer the xenos to live! Whatever the cost, we shall afford it!’

Click here to buy Martyr’s End.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2019.by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Martyr’s End © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Martyr’s End, 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: 978-1-78999-751-4

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.