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Watchers in Death – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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One

Terra – the Imperial Palace

The silence crept through the halls and into Koorland’s mind. There was no lack of noise in the chamber, but the silence found the cracks between the hiss of steam, the crackle of energy, the clanking of mechadendrites. The silence was strong. It was filled with the dead, and with futility. Koorland wondered if this same silence had blanketed Terra in the wake of the Proletarian Crusade. It was a quiet deeper than mourning, more powerful than despair. It had followed him from Ullanor. It had been waiting for him on Terra.

Its weight was crushing.

The chamber was part of a bulbous chapel on the west side of the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor’s exterior wall. The space was an ecumenical one, an architectural statement of the essential identity of the Imperial Creed and the Cult of the Omnissiah. The Black Templars of the Last Wall had insisted the decryption of the visual feed occur on sacred ground. Its transmission had been among the last acts of a Venerable Brother, and it had emerged from a battle where many Black Templars had died.

The chapel did double duty as site of worship and laboratorium. It would serve. The Mechanicus adepts fed the data through cogitators, assisted by Black Templars serfs. The air was thick with incense.

The operation was performed under the supervision of Eternity. He was of the Last Wall now, and wore the colours of the Imperial Fists, but he had come from the Black Templars. His arms were folded, his head bowed in reverence.

Koorland watched from the rear of the chapel with Thane. They were alone. Eternity had refused to allow any of the High Lords to bear witness, and Koorland did not blame him. Their presence would have disturbed the solemnity of the ceremony. Though Koorland did not care for the religiosity of the ritual, he accepted it. Even if he hadn’t, he would have barred the High Lords. There was no place for them and dignity to coexist.

‘Any speculations?’ Koorland asked Thane.

‘None.’ The Chapter Master of the Fists Exemplar spoke with a grim, flat tone. He sounded like a man bracing himself for the worst.

‘We know it is important. And to our advantage, if it emerged from a victory against the orks.’

‘I know,’ said Thane, as if Koorland had pointed out what he most dreaded.

Koorland said nothing else. Thane was surrounded by his own version of the crushing silence. Koorland could not dispel his own. There was nothing he could do for the Exemplar.

The silence settled over them. The chanting of the tech-priests and the crackle of energy discharges did little to pierce it. Koorland watched the ritual, but barely saw it. His vision narrowed to a dark tunnel. His consciousness sank into the tunnel and he stayed there, numb. The suffocation of the silence held off the piercing blade of loss, guilt and defeat for the moment. It was not a respite. It was only a different quality of pain.

He was so far in the tunnel he didn’t realise at first that he was being addressed.

‘Lord Commander Koorland,’ the voice repeated, its augmetic larynx buzzing.

Koorland blinked. The chapel snapped back into place about him. He looked down at the adept. Her name was Segorine. A cluster of servo-arms, segmented so that they flexed like tentacles, emerged from her torso. Her face was a steel mask dominated by compound eyes.

‘The decryption is complete,’ Segorine said.

‘Thank you,’ said Koorland. He and Thane followed her down the chapel aisle to where the other tech-priests waited. Behind the altar, a large pict screen pulsed with snow.

‘Faith,’ said Eternity.

Koorland waited.

‘Faith,’ Eternity said again. ‘That is what we are about to witness. That is what will grant us victory against the Beast.’

‘I see,’ Koorland said, noncommittal.

Segorine snaked out a limb to a control panel built into the altar. She depressed a dial, and the screen came to life. The images flickered and jumped, and the muzzles of beam weapons flared everything to white. Explosions broke up the picture.

But the worst distortion came from unleashed psychic energy. Koorland saw the Black Templars at bay, fighting hard against the ork horde. He saw the greenskin psyker, its power ferocious, seeming to destroy reality along with the images. He saw the Black Templars pray as they fought. The sound was a riot of distortion, a grating rhythm barely recognisable as gunfire. Breaking through in fragments were deep, sonorous chants, magnified by vox-casters. The voices of faith travelled across destruction and time to frame their moment of victory.

For a moment, the sound cleared altogether. The yowls of the orks and the concussions of the guns vanished. There was only the stern, martial prayer of the Black Templars. The energy flares of the witch stuttered, then spread out as if they had hit a wall. They curled away from the Space Marines. Koorland leaned forward, astonished. Arcing waves of power slammed back into the greenskin psyker. The beast’s mouth opened wide, its face contorted, and still there was only the sound of the chanting. The ork’s eyes burst. It exploded into flame. The energy flashed across the frame of the feed, utterly uncontrolled, blasting every ork to ash. The energy storm swallowed up the chanting. The chapel filled with a shattering feedback shriek, and the visual feed disintegrated.

The screen returned to snow, then went black.

‘The visible energy,’ Thane said slowly. ‘I didn’t see it come from the Black Templars.’

‘No,’ Koorland agreed. ‘It was all from the ork psyker.’ To the tech-priests he said, ‘Will you play that back again? Slowly.’

They watched. At the end, Thane said, ‘Are the orks and their witches linked?’

‘In some way, they must be,’ said Koorland. He could see no other interpretation. The psyker’s death had triggered the immolation of the horde.

‘So if we can target their psykers…’

‘A possible weakness, yes.’ Koorland turned to Eternity. ‘That was not the work of a single warrior, was it?’ Certainly not a Librarian. The Black Templars allowed no psykers within the ranks of their battle-brethren.

‘That was the faith of all my brothers present in that battle,’ said Eternity. ‘A collective strength.’

‘Against a single ork witch,’ said Thane.

‘Its fall destroyed its entire force,’ Eternity pointed out.

‘Yes,’ said Koorland. ‘Yes, it did.’

If only we’d known. The words came to him unbidden, a canker on his soul. He tried to push them away. He tried to tell himself the Imperial tactics on Ullanor would not have been altered, but his grief would permit no such comfort.

If only they had known. They would have fought differently. They would have made a greater priority of finding and taking out the ork psykers. They would have targeted the source of greenskin strength and turned it into a weakness.

He thought of Vulkan. The primarch had wished for the aid of the Sisters of Silence. He had recognised the need for a strong counter to the psykers.

He must have known, Koorland thought. He tried again to tell himself that they would not have fought any differently.

He knew that wasn’t true.

Neither were many things, he thought, that he had been telling himself of late. He had worked hard to maintain an illusion of self that made it possible for him to carry the responsibility he had shouldered. It made it possible for him to lead. But he had led nowhere except to disaster. He had nothing but contempt for the High Lords. At this moment, though, he was not sure how he was any different from them.

He forced himself to focus on the moment. ‘We may not see the key to the weakness in this data,’ he said. ‘But it is a weakness, and we will exploit it.’

But an hour later, he was still thinking about difference, his mind chasing itself in a toxic spiral. He walked alone on the ramparts of Daylight Wall, looking up into the night of Terra. There was a strong wind, and the sulphurous clouds over the Imperial Palace roiled, broke and reformed. In the gaps of their anger, the light of two moons reached down. Luna was a narrow, waning crescent. The reflected glow of the ork attack moon was paler, colder and more baleful. That threat was over, or at least contained. The orks were gone, the moon blockaded. But it was still a presence in the Terran sky, an insult and a wound to the heart of the Imperium. No enemy, even defeated, should ever have come so close.

He pictured another moon. He pictured several. Next time, the orks might not hold back from deploying their gravity weapons against Terra. They might have lost interest in conquest. They had been bloodied on Ullanor. Their vengeance might well take the form of total destruction.

And even if the moon was dead, it was not silent. It roared. I AM SLAUGHTER. I AM SLAUGHTER. I AM SLAUGHTER. The broadcast was ceaseless. It was gigantic. It would take nothing for Koorland to open a vox-channel and hear it.

He chose not to, but the reality of the shout was another poison in the toxic silence. The words of the Beast hammered at Terra, breaking down the spirit of its citizens. The roar mocked the sacrifices on Ullanor. It declared the futility of every Imperial endeavour to stop the orks. Every great quest, every journey, every challenge, every hard-won battle and shard of hope – they all meant nothing. What did they have to show for Caldera, for Ullanor? Even their victory against the moon was turned into mockery.

Koorland grieved, and so did all the world. He did not know fear, but he knew its cancer possessed every mortal soul on Terra.

The battlements of Daylight Wall were built upon many terraces. Turrets and cannon emplacements on multiple levels faced the east, so many it seemed they should be able to kill the rising sun if it dared to challenge the Emperor. Koorland walked along the top. He took up a position between the crenellations and looked down at the bristling strength below him. Not long ago, this perspective would have renewed his sense of duty and of purpose. Now he observed the defences and thought: Not enough.

The guns were insufficient.

So was he.

The approaching footsteps were quiet, more from a desire not to disturb than not to be heard. Koorland turned to the right. Drakan Vangorich, Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, walked down the wide avenue of the wall towards him. There was enough room between the battlements for a Baneblade to pass, and the Assassin was a tiny figure in the night. On either side, the relief sculptures of the crenellations celebrated Imperial might. Heroic figures cut down their foes with sword and gun. Koorland’s eyes went back and forth from the brutal strength of the stone to the wiry Grand Master. In the contrast, he felt a glimmer of inspiration. It passed before he could discern its shape.

Vangorich nodded to Koorland as he drew near. ‘A homecoming?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Koorland. ‘Daylight Wall Company is gone. And my duty is no longer named by a single battlement.’

‘It was never limited to that, though.’

‘No, it wasn’t.’ Koorland sighed. ‘But there was great order in that naming. Symbols have powerful meaning.’

‘As does their loss,’ Vangorich said quietly.

‘Yes.’ The annihilation of Daylight Wall Company was of little importance next to the loss of a Chapter. And what was even that compared to the death of a primarch?

‘I’ve seen the recording,’ Vangorich said.

‘For all the good it does us now.’

Vangorich gave him a sharp look. ‘Defeatism doesn’t suit you, Lord Commander Koorland.’

‘Neither does naïveté,’ Koorland said.

Vangorich was quiet for a moment. Then he said, ‘It isn’t that long since we last spoke on this wall.’

‘It isn’t, and I don’t come here seeking to have my morale boosted by you.’

‘It would be an odd thing to do, given my particular duty.’

Koorland grunted.

‘I hope, though,’ Vangorich went on, ‘that you will listen to counsel.’

‘I know what you would have to say about being a symbol.’

‘And you would deny its truth.’

‘I would deny my fitness to serve as that symbol.’

‘Would you deny your duty to do so?’

‘You know I would not,’ Koorland growled. Duty and fitness were very different things, and he resented Vangorich’s blurring of the two.

‘No,’ the Grand Master said. ‘You have never turned from your duty. You have always done it. You did it on Ullanor too.’

‘To no end.’

‘And who would have been better suited? Who should have led instead?’

Koorland didn’t answer.

‘Vulkan left much of the campaign in your hands, didn’t he?’ Vangorich said.

‘He did.’

‘Was he wrong? Did he err?’

Koorland looked down at the Grand Master and glared. Again he said nothing. He could not bring himself to say aloud that Vulkan had been mistaken. He would not question the final decisions of the last primarch.

‘I’ll take your silence as a no,’ Vangorich said.

‘You’re playing a game with words,’ said Koorland. ‘It isn’t amusing and it isn’t useful.’

‘You’re right,’ Vangorich said, his tone suddenly sharp. ‘There would be nothing useful in a game. The High Lords have proven this many times over, and as far as I can tell, they’re very much intent on proving it yet again. I am not playing at anything. What we need right now is clarity, don’t you agree?’

‘I do.’ He grimaced. ‘We could have used the clarity of Magneric’s information on Ullanor.’

‘Exactly. Obfuscation, illusion, denial, ignorance, they have brought us disaster.’

So has everything else, Koorland thought. He said, ‘Your point, when you reach it, will have to be an impressive one, Drakan.’

‘Did Vulkan speak to you before the end?’

‘He did.’

‘And?’

Koorland took a deep breath. He let it out with a shudder, as if it could expel the burdens and memories that had built up like a toxic cloud inside his chest. ‘He ordered me to carry on.’

‘That was all?’

‘He called me Lord Commander. He said I was the Imperial Fists.’

‘And you would dismiss those words?’

Koorland shook his head. ‘It isn’t that simple.’

‘I see nothing simple in what I am suggesting. I see that you have a great burden to carry, one that is enormously complex. It is yours, however. You shouldered it after Ardamantua. You have carried it since. Vulkan reaffirmed your duty to carry on. It is your burden, because you have the strength for it. The primarch saw you are the leader we need now. So do all your brothers. Across the Chapters.’

Koorland narrowed his gaze in disbelief.

‘Your doubt has no place here, Lord Commander,’ Vangorich said. ‘Unless your information is more complete than mine. Has there been a challenge to your leadership? Has one of the surviving Space Wolves stepped forward to declare himself the alpha of the campaign?’

‘No,’ said Koorland. ‘And I would thank you to refer to those Space Marines with greater respect. They have sacrificed much.’

‘All have,’ Vangorich said softly. ‘And the mission was a disaster. Yet there has been no challenge. There is a reason for that. They see what Vulkan saw. They await your orders.’

‘My orders.’

‘I assume you aren’t going to wait for the orks to attack first.’

Koorland felt the corners of his lips pull back. After a moment he realised something like a smile, cold and hard and hungry, had appeared on his face.

‘You’re very good at what you do,’ he told Vangorich.

‘I have to be.’

Koorland studied the Grand Master. ‘Perhaps we should learn from you,’ he said. As he spoke, the feeling of inspiration returned. It was stronger now. Closer to being something he could articulate.

‘What do you think I could teach you?’

‘Precision,’ Koorland said. The idea had almost formed. ‘You rely on few to do work that affects many.’

‘Precision is the correct word,’ said Vangorich. ‘What is necessary is not overwhelming force. What is needed is the right weapon and the right target.’

‘Which we have lacked,’ Koorland muttered.

‘The weapon or the target?’

‘Both. We thought we had found the Beast on Ullanor. Vulkan gave his life to slay it. And now…’ He pointed at the attack moon.

I AM SLAUGHTER, said the silence.

Koorland felt the words without hearing them. He saw Vangorich wince, and knew the Grand Master felt them too.

‘The Beast survived?’ Vangorich asked.

‘No. It can’t have. Yet something with its voice lives on. And that palace on Ullanor…’

‘Yes,’ said Vangorich. He understood. The horror was not lost on him.

‘They are creating an empire,’ Koorland said. ‘They plan to build it on the ashes of our own.’

Vangorich nodded. ‘The ambassadors,’ he said.

‘What about them?’

‘More evidence of the construction of an empire. The greenskins are evolving the classes that will be needed for an empire to function.’ He nodded to himself again. ‘So,’ he said, ‘no matter what died on Ullanor, the force of the Beast lives on. We have to consider what this means for our strategy.’

‘Our attack was too blunt. We were not a surprise. The orks knew what was coming, and prepared for us.’

‘What do you conclude, then?’

‘We need to keep looking for the Beast. In whatever form the guiding power of the orks exists, let us call it that. If we destroy it…’

‘The ork empire will fall,’ Vangorich finished. ‘A decapitation. You need to commit yourself to that, Lord Commander.’

‘We are. We were. We have to change our methods, though. If we come at the orks again as we did, even if we could assemble such a force again, they will win again. They outnumber us, and they outgun us.’ The last admission was the hardest. The entire history of the Imperium’s fight against the orks had involved the superiority of humanity’s technology against the orks’ vast tide of savagery. Recognising that the orks’ technology had outstripped the Imperium’s was a perpetually reopened wound. It had been the most basic fact of the war since Ardamantua, but speaking the words aloud sounded perilously close to capitulation. Not to face that reality would lead to true defeat. ‘We have to hit them another way.’

The inspiration that had teased the edge of his consciousness burst upon him. It had the clarity of revelation. He had known the same certainty when he had called for a unified command of the Imperial Fists Successor Chapters. Then, as now, the epiphany had come in the wake of devastating loss. Then, as now, he saw his course of action allowed for no doubt. He might question his own worthiness. He knew he would. But the path to follow shone before him.

He did not look at what he must do as cause for hope. It might yet fail. It was, instead, the thing that must be done. It was the one move left that the orks might not be able to counter.

‘Sometimes,’ Vangorich said, unknowingly giving voice to Koorland’s revelation, ‘a single knife can be more effective than a broadsword.’

‘Yes,’ Koorland said. ‘Yes. As your Officio has shown throughout its history. I’m interested in your tactics, Drakan. We need to learn from them. That is the counsel I would welcome from you.’

‘The Adeptus Astartes are not assassins,’ Vangorich said. He sounded cautious. ‘There are paths we must be careful not to take, if we do not want to repeat mistakes a thousand years old.’

‘We aren’t assassins,’ Koorland agreed. He respected Vangorich, but more, the Grand Master was the one member of the High Council for whom he felt anything even remotely approaching trust. He respected Veritus and Wienand, but he did not trust either. They were too immersed in the political machinations of the ordos. Veritus, in particular, he did not trust to act as the needs of the immediate crisis dictated. But now, as Vangorich spoke, Koorland saw the politician emerge in him. His caution was genuine. Even so, Koorland sensed an instinctive territorial defence.

Vangorich did not have to worry. Koorland had no interest in assassination. Decapitation was still the goal. And now he could imagine a new means to that end.

‘I don’t want to know about your organisation, your weapons or your specific tactics,’ Koorland said. ‘I want to hear about the broader strategy. Your philosophy of war.’

Vangorich gave him a half-smile. ‘You think the Officio Assassinorum goes to war?’

‘Of course it does, even if it might use a different name.’

Vangorich parted his hands, conceding the point. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Tell me about the knife, and how it strikes.’

Click here to buy Watchers in Death.

For Margaux, and to her voice.

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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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
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