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We Were Brothers – Extract

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We Were Brothers

Richard Fox

The assault torpedo shifted beneath the heavy ceramite of Straxis’ boots. The blood-red light from the few functioning glow-globes bolted to the bulkhead washed out the scarlet of his Terminator armour. Shallow ruts that had been scraped through the Imperial eagle on his breastplate glinted in the light, the desecration intentionally conspicuous. Straxis sucked air through ceramite and dead-bone teeth as the target rune on his optics resolved into an Adeptus Astartes strike cruiser. The ship bled air and flickers of plasma from macrocannon strikes to her aft, hits an amateur captain would take pride in. Straxis would have encouraging words with the Tyrant’s Grasp’s gunnery crews when he returned to the ship. The alpha strike from a proper ambush should have left the target helpless and bare for harvest, not limping towards the Mandeville point to escape into the warp.

Straxis narrowed his eyes as the lines of the wounded ship became clearer through the torpedo’s auspex. Could it be…?

He turned his gaze to the Terminator in the restraint bay behind him, azure light flickering from the double set of eye-lenses in his companion’s helm. ‘Rochnar, can you taste their astropath?’ He raised his chainfist and flicked two clawed digits at the sorcerer. ‘They should be bleating for help. What is the name of this ship?’

The assault torpedo carrying Straxis and his retinue roiled from side to side like a small boat in troubled waters as the swarm of boarders shifted formation. The first shells from the strike cruiser exploded well short of the forward craft. Ranging shots, Straxis knew. The next volley would be more precise.

The Terminator lord scraped the fingers of his chainfist together, emitting sparks as if he was striking flint. The tiny motes hit mildewed skin on the back of the pilot-servitor’s skull, hissing and popping as they burned into the flesh. He felt the machine spirit within flexing and tensing, anticipating his next order.

Rochnar’s eye-lenses flashed.

‘She carries the name Rann’s Blade, but her cries are distorted this close to the Mandeville–’

‘Rann’s Blade,’ Straxis growled. His twin hearts thundered in his chest as his gene-wrought body slipped into combat readiness far too early. ‘The Corpse-Emperor’s Executioners… Finally.’

He reached for an adamantine claw sigil dangling from a cord bolted to his armour, and rubbed a ceramite-encased thumb against it. An Adeptus Astartes Chapter symbol pressed into the metal had been worn down to a shadow of what it used to be.

The relic had a twin, one exchanged in honour between two battle-brothers. He remembered the smell of rotting xenos, the stink of their oily blood on his blade, and the congealed gore that had soaked into every crevice of the Executioners’ fortress-monastery. The Executioners had cried out for aid to combat the unidentified aliens, and the Astral Claws had answered, saving the Executioners from certain destruction.

What a stain on the Executioners’ memory it would have been to fall to some nameless xenos filth. An embarrassment to Dorn’s gene-seed. They were saved from humiliation and had sworn oaths of fealty to their saviours, but their loyalty had lasted only as long as it was convenient.

One of the Executioners’ surviving Chaplains, Thulsa Cane, had personally thanked Straxis for driving the aliens from a librarium critical to their Chapter cult. They’d clasped arms, exchanged tokens and made the same vows their Chapter Masters had done to each other… And how had the Executioners honoured that oath?

Betrayal.

The Bell of Lost Souls would toll for the Executioners. Lord Huron and the Red Corsairs would make sure of that.

Straxis sent an impulse command from his Terminator armour into the machine spirit of his assault torpedo and overrode the formation for the rest of the swarm. He redirected the torpedoes full of cultists – mad zealots surgically bonded to their void suits per the Red Corsairs’ needs – to new attack points on the Rann’s Blade. His own cadre of torpedoes was now vectored towards the enemy ship’s sanctum.

‘Straxis, what are you doing?’ thundered Captain Zuborra of the Tyrant’s Grasp, his voice emerging from a servo-skull nestled over the forward breach claws of the bay holding Straxis’ Terminator retinue. ‘Lord Huron wants that ship, not trinkets.’

‘I was with Lord Huron when the Emperor’s dogs took the Palace of Thorns,’ Straxis said. ‘Not you. The Blackheart has enough ships. Given the choice, he’ll take revenge. Especially on these mongrels. Do not disturb my humours again.’ He lifted his combi-weapon from an arming thrall and ignited the melta-core. The slave scurried away, leaving a stench of fear that Straxis’ transhuman senses drank in.

His retinue shifted in their bays, moving with a synchronicity that belied their mismatched Terminator armour. Most remained largely unchanged since their days of service in Chapters leashed to the High Lords, but some bore touches of the warp and parts cobbled together from scraps and barter with other Space Marines dubbed heretic. Straxis had fought beside them for decades, each was as loyal as any Red Corsair could be… Yet they all were once blank-eyed thralls to the Carrion Throne.

‘Achilieus, what is the value of an oath?’ Straxis asked the newest member of his retinue; the defaced Imperial eagle on the warrior’s breastplate still bore jagged edges of ruination inflicted when the Terminator had abandoned the Sons of Orar Chapter.

‘My oath to Huron Blackheart is the only one that matters. He is the Master of the Maelstrom, and we are his claws. Oaths made to false idols have no value,’ Achilieus said.

‘Spoken like a slave who broke his own chains,’ Straxis said. ‘Brother Chyron, what is the value of an oath to your battle-brothers?’

Chyron tilted his heavy flamer from side to side. Promethium laced with the Grandfather’s rot burbled out of the seals. Chyron had been an Astral Claw; there would be no hesitation from him when it came to the Executioners.

‘Our oaths to each other are all we are,’ Chyron rasped. He hadn’t removed his helm in months and his voice had degenerated into something that sounded like a cold wind through dead fields. ‘Astartes who break their oaths are the only traitors.’

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