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Storm of Damocles – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

LOCATION: MOON QX-937, SEXTON SYSTEM,
DAMOCLES GULF, 999.M41

Captain Nergui of the Deathwatch stopped his bike at the top of one of the foothills and looked out into the void. To his left were the uncountable stars that made up the galaxy, the home of humanity, the hope for survival.

To the right were the empty shadows of the Eastern Fringe, where the wide-flung spiral arms threw a last few fingers of light out into the vast night. The light of these lonely stars was bright against the black. But it was to the shadows between them that he turned his gaze, and stared into the darkness. It was always the darkness from which his enemies – the foes of all mankind – came.

He unclasped his helmet and set it into the crook of his elbow. He had sent two kill teams out on this mission but neither of them had returned, and now he was desperate for answers, for a hint of what had happened to them.

This was the third rock they’d visited in as many days, just one of thousands that drifted through the less hospitable parts of the gas clouds in the Damocles Gulf. But what was strange about this one was that it had an atmosphere: thin, sulphurous, but an atmosphere nonetheless.

Nergui turned around. A light appeared over the southern horizon, coming low and winding towards him in great sweeping parabolas. It was Cadvan, formerly of the Storm Giants, searching in the Corvus Blackstar.

‘Captain. There’s nothing here,’ Cadvan voxed as he approached to within half a mile. The moon was empty apart from an archaic tau communication hub on the southern pole, which did not look like it had been touched for decades.

‘No,’ Nergui said. ‘But this was the last known position of Kill Team Primus.’

He could hear Cadvan grunt. Brother Cadvan was a big, flame-haired, thunder hammer of a warrior. He was the newest recruit to Nergui’s chamber and had proved himself the master of saying the obvious. He didn’t do subtleties. ‘Well. They’re not here now.’

Nergui knew arguing with a Storm Giant would be a waste of breath, however sulphurous. ‘No,’ he said, ‘they’re not. But they were here, and I want to find out what happened to them.’

He closed the vox-link before Cadvan could respond.

Cadvan was right though. There was nothing here, so why did the air reek of xenos taint?

Ahead of Nergui rose the lip of a great crater where some ancient asteroid had smashed into the moon, leaving behind a scar miles wide. Nergui skidded his bike – Ganbold – up the loose scree of the rise, using his knees to turn the handlebars. All Chogoreans learnt to ride horses as soon as they were big enough to balance upon a saddle, and they treated their bikes in the same casual way. Riding without hands was a trick White Scars learnt as Scouts, allowing them to fire and reload as they rode down their foes. He did it unconsciously now, knowing when to touch the handlebars just long enough to steady the bike over a rock or round a landmine, and turned towards the next low peak.

Dust and pebbles sprayed out behind as Nergui accelerated up a bare slab of copper-veined black rock. A fissure opened up suddenly before him, and he swerved past, the engine note rising as the incline steepened. He only took hold of the handlebars when the scree got so thick that he had to zigzag his way up. He brought his bike to where the rim of the crater fell precipitously before him, and paused.

Far below, the land was flat and plain, except for where sulphur pools slowly bubbled and spluttered, and the dark circles of smaller craters dotted the land in irregular patterns. Nergui was unusual among the veterans of the Deathwatch in that battle damage had not rendered it necessary to restore his vision. He looked out with narrowed yellow eyes over the boulder fields, craters and sulphur pools, silent except for the gentle hiss of atmosphere and the low revving of his bike. The Corvus made a low pass three miles to the west, banking off towards the polar region.

‘I’ve seen something,’ Nergui voxed and revved his bike forwards, over the edge of the crater. His wheels bounced once, twice on the rocks, and then there was nothing but thin air, and the exquisite sense of falling.

Nergui’s bike crunched as the reinforced suspension took the impact of hitting the bottom slopes of the crater. Once, twice he bounced. He had to hold on with one hand as Ganbold hit rocks and loose scree, the wheels screaming and the tyres beginning to smoke as he reached dangerous speeds, but still he clung on, grinning with the challenge.

In a few seconds the drop began to flatten out, the slopes less sheer as the crater wall approached the bottom. He gunned the engine, bouncing and roaring over fissures and boulders, until the crater levelled out as he approached the centre.

The armour was half buried, about ten miles from the cliff top, in the empty boulder field. Nergui caught it with one hand as he brought Ganbold to a skidding halt. The ceramite was blistered and melted, the charred edges dented and scratched, but despite the damage it was unmistakably the shoulder pad from a suit of Mark VI Corvus armour.

He looked around further. Just a shoulder pad. Nothing else. Nergui cursed. No body, no gun, no sign of what had stripped away the layers of ceramite plating. He dusted the dirt from the patches of unmelted armour. Enough of the insignia remained for him to recognise it as the badge of the Marines Errant: a flaming star on a background of midnight blue.

This was Brother Priam’s.

He engaged his vox, spoke tersely. ‘Cadvan. Bring Domitian here.’

The Storm Giant’s voice crackled back. ‘What is it?’

Nergui did not bother answering, but kicked Ganbold forwards.

The last telepathic relay had come from this moon. Kill Team Primus were amongst the best the Chapter had – eight of the finest veterans, honed through decades of battle against the alien. Priam had more augmetic parts than an Iron Hand – ‘Easy to wound,’ he’d laughed, ‘but hard to kill.’ It was the same for Ellial. Tula. Octavian. Nidal, even. Each of these warriors could have been a captain, like himself. He had led them many times. They could not just have disappeared. There had to be more evidence. A clue.

Searching further, Nergui found a few more scraps of Priam’s Mark VI power armour – a knee plate and an ankle fitting – and a spare underslung magazine for his combi-bolter. If he knew Priam, the Marine Errant had either made it away from the main battle, to draw the enemy off, or – more likely – he had been the last survivor.

The Corvus Blackstar grew from a dark spot to a blur as it skimmed in over the eastern horizon, just yards from the ground, a line of dust rising in its wake. Even at this speed it would take fifty seconds to reach him. He was about to investigate a deep crater fifty yards to the right when he shivered – an involuntary response, as though ice were dripping down the back of his neck.

‘Don’t do that,’ he almost said, as Librarian Domitian’s psychic presence slid into his consciousness, but by then the mind of the Imperial Fists psyker was within him.

There were no words, as such, just compulsions.

+I’m here,+ it seemed to say. +Show me what you have found.+

Nergui held up the shoulder pad and inspected it as though he were looking at it for the first time.

+Ah.+ Domitian was seeing through his eyes. +Priam.+

‘Yes.’ Nergui shook himself and forced his gaze away from the shoulder pad, but the Librarian’s presence had gone.

Nergui had served with all kinds of Librarians in his time. His Chapter’s own Stormseers, of course, who revelled in shamanistic rituals and totems, creating a mystery of it all, and then many Librarians from other Chapters. Blood Angels. Space Wolves. The strangest had been the Black Dragon Epistolary named Ulgon. He had bony protrusions on his skull and arms that he used in combat, and he had kept himself very much to himself, and the rest of them had been happy about that.

Ulgon’s Chapter had called him back. Nergui doubted he’d have lasted much longer. You could tell the brothers who were destined for death. There was a Lamenters Librarian who had dreamt that he was destined to die on Terra. He had joked about it for a while, but when they were given the mission to clear the drifting hulk named Heart of Terra, he had gone silent, and they knew he’d understood. He had held the genestealers back as the rest of his kill team withdrew to a defensible position. It was a good death. It helped, Nergui thought, when you knew it was coming.

But Domitian, the former Imperial Fist, was almost normal, at times, Nergui thought. You could almost forget that he wielded such power. But he had the odd habit of entering your mind too much, too invasively, as if he forgot that others did not have his abilities.

Domitian’s mind touched Nergui’s for a moment.

+We are nearly there.+

‘I can see.’ Nergui liked to speak the words aloud, even when his interlocutor was just a voice inside his head.

Nergui watched the Corvus approach and lift for a moment, as retro engines fired blue flames. The down-draught threw up a great cloud of grit as it settled on its landing gear, and Cadvan waved as he powered the craft down and checked his screen readings.

The dust was still settling when one of the fore-facing landing ramps lowered and a single figure marched down – small, for a Space Marine, slight, almost. Delicate. Poised. Intense.

Domitian knew all that Nergui had seen, but sometimes he acted as if he did not have the access to others’ minds that he did.

‘So,’ he said, ‘you have found Priam’s armour.’

Nergui nodded. ‘Yes.’

He held out the shoulder pad. Domitian took it and sighed. ‘Was it over there?’

Nergui nodded.

‘I found these as well,’ Nergui said. He held out the other pieces. Domitian smiled pleasantly and nodded.

‘Yes, I saw. Now, stay back. Your presence will only obscure the traces. I shall go and see if there is anything left.’

Cadvan jumped down from the Corvus Blackstar’s cockpit, his reinforced power-armoured boots crunching into the dust. He took off his helmet and held it in one hand as he strode towards Nergui. The scar across Cadvan’s cheek gave the Storm Giant’s mouth a lopsided grin. He saw the damage to Priam’s shoulder pad and said, ‘So they’re dead?’

Nergui nodded. ‘Priam most likely is.’

Cadvan gave a low and humourless chuckle. ‘Has he found anything?’ He nodded towards where Domitian was pacing slowly across the ground.

Nergui shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

Cadvan waited for a moment. ‘Do you think they all died here?’

Nergui was silent for a long time, then he nodded and said, ‘Perhaps.’

Cadvan liked to talk. He stood there for a while, as if thinking of something else to say, then seemed to change his mind and wandered back towards the Corvus.

Nergui let him go. He preferred to be alone. He watched Domitian move in a deliberate zigzag pattern, his psychic searchlight straining into the past, away from Nergui, looking for warp echoes of what had happened. Nergui’s thoughts began to drift for a moment, before the sudden presence of the Librarian’s mind made him shudder and his body stiffened.

+They died here.+

‘All of them?’

+All, I cannot tell. But more than one or two. The sense of death is thick. Some xenos, also.+

‘Where are their bodies?’

+Not here. But their presence remains. I feel anger. Frustration. Betrayal.+

‘Betrayal?’

+It is not hard to grasp what messages the dead leave behind them. The images that are easiest to read are related to the strongest emotions.+

Nergui turned and regarded the scene. It was as if the battlefield had been scoured clean. He strode to the Corvus and swung himself up to stand on the wing. He had seen the crater from the heights and he brought that image back to mind, seeing it differently now.

The smaller crater patterns were not asteroid strikes. Understanding went through him like a blade. He saw it all clearly. The clusters were where massive ordnance had been brought to bear.

Jumping down from the Corvus, he jogged to the nearest crater. There were lumps of molten copper, ripped from the ore by the intensity of the blasts. He knelt, rubbed his fingers in the dirt, and lifted them to his nose.

The scent had the unmistakable tang of plasma.

‘They made their stand here,’ he said. He could see it all. Where they had fallen back, desperate for shelter. Where they had split into pairs, dividing their pursuers, where each crater trail came to an end.

He took Ganbold and roared over to the farthest cluster, nearly half a mile away from where the Corvus’ engines were turning over. Three overlapping craters marked the place. He shuddered. Brothers had died here.

Nergui stopped suddenly, skidded round, bent from the saddle and plucked a spent brass bolt shell as easily as a Chogorean boy would swing from the saddle to pluck a ball from the ground.

Hellstrike round. Fired within the last month. He was about to move on when he saw a skull lying in the dirt. A tiny thing, no larger than a simian’s head, plated with gold and with facetted eyes of shaped red crystal.

He felt a cold shiver, as he did when Domitian entered his mind, but Domitian’s presence was nowhere near him.

Nergui clicked his vox-link open. ‘Domitian. I’ve found Ellial’s totem.’

Domitian’s mind was with him instantly. +Bring it to me.+

Brother Ellial had come to the Deathwatch from the Mortifactors Chapter.

The home world of the Mortifactors, Posul, was doomed to perpetual darkness, and that darkness had entered their souls, into their ways of being and ways of relating to the galaxy. Nergui had once been sent as an emissary to the Chapter.

He remembered landing on their fortress-monastery – a vast star fort in high orbit. The landing bay walls were decorated with the oversized bones of thousands of Space Marines. No body was complete. Femurs were arranged in spiral patterns. Shoulder blades into another. It had seemed disrespectful to display the bones of the dead warriors in this way.

A guide had appeared, hooded and pale.

‘This way,’ the guide had said, before leading him across the hallowed silence of the entrance hall to an arch of skulls. Adeptus Astartes’ skulls, Nergui saw, with distaste, some of the bones yellow with age and still bearing the violent marks of their death blows.

He had met the Chapter under a chandelier of ribs and scapulae, with skulls as the setting for the tallow candles. He had politely refused food and the Chapter Master had seen through his manners.

‘You will find recruits from our Chapter the most stalwart of all, for we do not fear death,’ the Chapter Master had explained, his face hidden in shadow. ‘We embrace it, for when we die, our souls are united with the Emperor on the Golden Throne.’

He’d brought Ellial back with him that time.

They’d served together for years, and before battle the Mortifactor always closed his eyes in meditation, his hearts almost stopping and his breathing slowing to a slight flare of the nostrils, once or twice a minute. It was the manner of the Mortifactors to withdraw like this before combat, just as it was the manner of the Space Wolves to brag and laugh at danger. Seconds before battle, Ellial would be sitting, eyes closed, body relaxed, and moments before the first shot his eyes would snap open.

‘We commune with the primarch, and all the brothers that have gone before us. They are our ancestors, in a manner of speaking,’ Ellial had told him. He’d been sitting in his cell – a shrine, really, to death – surrounded by the skulls of enemies he had taken. They were stacked up the walls and angled over into an arched ceiling of jaws and eye sockets, and the skulls of things that had no eyes – like the nicassar head that he had taken and which held pride of place in his room, the bulges in the thin, bird-like skull showing where the psychic glands had formed.

‘What do your Chapter believe?’ Ellial had asked, and Nergui laughed.

‘We do not think about death,’ he’d said.

Ellial had blinked in surprise. ‘No?’

Nergui had shaken his head. ‘No. We do not care for such things. We care for the wind in our hair, the blood of our foes, the ferocity of our assault. And after death, we sleep, because the battle is done.’

And that was enough.

Ellial was one of those who had been changed by his time within the Deathwatch. He had stopped drinking the blood of his foes, although he’d never given up collecting their skulls, or entering a near-death state of meditation as he approached battle.

The tiny gold-plated skull was Ellial’s totem, the thing he meditated upon when he wished to go into a deep trance. As Nergui’s fingers touched it he flinched, as if stung. There was a psychic presence there. He had the strangest feeling that Ellial was standing next to him.

As he rode Ganbold back, he held the tiny skull in his hand, as a Chogorean boy would carry a wounded bird, and he gave it to Domitian with due reverence.

Domitian closed his eyes and focused.

‘He’s here,’ Domitian gasped before he was quite ready to speak. ‘He has stayed, knowing we would find him. But he is weak. No one else could have held his presence so long after death. Only a Mortifactor. I must concentrate.’

The temperature began to drop.

Nergui’s nose began to drip. He wiped it and saw a smear of blood on his armour. The cold was precipitating acid from the air. It was starting to corrode his nasal lining.

‘What is happening?’ Cadvan voxed. ‘Your readings are showing that you are bleeding.’

‘It’s Domitian. He’s got Ellial’s totem skull. He’s communing with it.’

The Storm Giant was one of those brothers whose attitude was unchanged by the proximity of other Chapters and traditions.

‘Throne!’ he said. ‘Tell me when they’re done.’

Nergui stayed on, even as the noxious gases thickened about Domitian, creating a yellow mist of sulphuric acid. Nergui could feel the bite in his throat now. There was blood in his lungs. The blood in his nose had clotted but the scab hung like a red icicle, before he brushed it away.

Domitian staggered from the acidic mist, his drawn face white. Fresh red blood dripped from his nostrils and ears, and even from the corner of his human eye. He coughed, and there was blood there too. Even the black of his armour had been eaten away to reveal the yellow of his Chapter, and in patches raw metal. He made a gesture which said, I cannot speak.

Nergui felt the cold, wet, icy touch of Domitian’s presence slipping into his skull again. The world went dark. He resisted briefly, as he felt the Librarian taking over his mind. For a moment he was sitting in a Corvus, holding a storm shield, eyes closed as the craft bucked, weaved and lurched over hills and craters, gullies – and then he understood.

This was Ellial’s memory, as the Mortifactor had passed it on to Domitian.

Nergui braced himself as he prepared to watch the last moments of Ellial’s life.

Click here to buy Storm of Damocles.

For Papa Edwin & the staff and fellow gamers of Fun Atelier, Hong Kong, with whom I rolled dice for so many years; and especially the Veteran Company – who put the narrative into gaming. Keep fighting. There is only War…

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2016.
This eBook edition published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
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Cover illustration by Roman Tishenin.

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