Deathwatch: The Omnibus by Various

Author:Various [Various]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2017-11-06T09:15:38+00:00

Zaeus killed the feed.

‘There are coordinates, and from what I could discern when I interfaced with the ship’s long range augurs, they lead to a stronghold.’

Ar’gan had been crouched listening to the looped message, but now he sat up.

‘A bastion? Reinforcements?’

‘At the very least a way off this rock and back to the Watch.’

The two of them were sitting in the ship’s hold. Festaron was laid out in front of

them, hands folded across his chest in the sign of the aquila. Polino was resting

against a bulkhead, his eyes fluttering. In the dull lambency of the internal lighting, the captain’s skin looked sallow and waxy. He gave no indication he had heard either of them.

Ar’gan remained sceptical. ‘There was nothing in the mission brief that

mentioned an Adeptus Astartes garrison on this world.’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t relevant. Perhaps it had simply been forgotten. Either way, we must investigate.’

After a moment’s thought, Ar’gan nodded.

Vortan was outside, keeping watch through the scopes from a vantage on top of

the fuselage.

Three hard raps against the hull was the signal that he had seen something.

Wordlessly, Zaeus and Ar’gan went outside.

The Marine Malevolent handed the magnoculars to Zaeus who augmented the

view with his bionic eye.

‘It’s them, isn’t it,’ said Vortan.

‘Yes,’ Zaeus confirmed, checking the internal chrono on his lens display. ‘Less

than an hour. Mercy wasn’t on our side after all.’

‘I want to kill them,’ the Marine Malevolent declared.

Ar’gan was casting around the ship. Carfax had set it down in a narrow defile,

high cliffs on either side that were tough to reach from the ground. It was a good

extraction point: hidden, defensible with only two bottlenecks at either end of the valley as realistic points of ingress.

‘Zaeus has found a bastion, potential reinforcement,’ announced the

Salamander. He was still appraising their surroundings when he added, ‘We

could hold here. Maintain a defensive perimeter until your return.’ He looked at

the Brazen Minotaur, who looked back impassively through his retinal lenses.

‘Three of these turrets are still functional,’ Vortan weighed in. ‘I can liberate the

cannons, set them up behind a makeshift emplacement with the cargo from the

hold.’ He thumbed towards Ar’gan. ‘Salamander takes one, I the other. Both

ends of the valley covered. A pity you used all our grenades,’ he added wryly.

‘We could have mined them too.’

‘And Captain Polino?’ Zaeus asked.

Now the Marine Malevolent gave a short, snorted laugh. ‘He takes the third

gun, squeezes the trigger until the moment his fingers give out. He’s close to suspended animation coma as it is, but at least this way his contribution might count for something.’

‘Agreed,’ said Zaeus, giving the scopes to Ar’gan so the Salamander could take

a look at the opposition.

‘How far’s the bastion?’ he asked, tweaking the focus. ‘Or should I ask how long we need to hold them for?’

‘Taking into account the return journey, one hundred and thirty-seven minutes.

But the ident-marker on that message was Adeptus Astartes in origin, so

reinforcement will be substantial and battle-winning.’

Vortan clapped Zaeus on the shoulder. ‘Then bring back angels on wings of

screaming death for our salvation, brother.’

‘You always were the poet,’ said Ar’gan.

The Marine Malevolent corrected him, ‘You’re mistaking poet for zealot,

Salamander.’

Whilst his brothers made ready the defences outside, Zaeus was left alone to explore the hold. Captain Polino was in there too, but inert. Eyes closed, his skin

the colour of wax, he might well have been dead. Only the slight murmur of his

neck as he breathed fitfully betrayed the ruse.

‘Rest easy, brother,’ said Zaeus, lifting a hand from the Imperial Fist’s shoulder

as he went deeper into the hold. It was dark, most of the internal lume-strips shorted out or simply destroyed in the attack that had claimed Carfax’s life. If the ambushers were still around they had yet to announce their presence, but Zaeus suspected not. Some of the gunship’s contents had been stripped, only that

which could easily be carried and reappropriated. It was why the heavy cannon

still remained.

Zaeus mouthed a silent prayer of binaric to the Omnissiah that something else

had proven too cumbersome for the xenos scavengers and smiled when he saw

the cargo crate at the very back of the hold, still unopened.

A luminator attached to his battle-helm snapped on, revealing a dusty access panel. There were no runes upon it in which to punch a code. Instead there was a

simple vox-corder. A blurt of binaric from the Brazen Minotaur’s mouth grille turned the red lume on the panel to green. Escaping pressure hissed into the cabin and the door to the cargo crate, which was easily as tall again as the Techmarine, opened.

Within, Zaeus found what he sought and quickly set to work.

The low, angry squeal of a rotating belt-track interrupted the defence

preparations around the gunship.

Ar’gan looked up from fitting a drum mag into one of the cannons he’d

liberated from the Thunderhawk’s wing. Vortan was stripping sections of the

gunship’s ablative armour to form makeshift barricades behind which the

Salamander would set up the guns.

‘In the name of the Throne…’ said Vortan, setting down a chunk of scrap he’d

been hammering into shape.

Ar’gan simply stared.

‘What did you do?’

‘Removed the torso and organics,’ Zaeus told them. ‘It’s crude but will provide

much greater land speed across the desert.’ He was squatting on the hard metal

frame of a track bed, two wide slatted belts of vulcanised rubber grinding either

side, providing locomotion. The Techmarine’s haptic implants were connected to

the simple motor engine that had once been slaved to the cyborganic body of a

servitor. Through them, he controlled the vehicle’s speed and directionality.

It had taken him approximately four minutes to affect the modification, engage

the machine-spirit and drive from the gunship’s hold.

‘I have a revised estimate for my return,’ said Zaeus. ‘Eighty-eight minutes.

Think you can last that long?’ he asked.

‘Be on your way, brother,’ said Ar’gan.

Vortan finished for the Salamander. ‘The chrono’s already running.’

Another xenos coming over the ridge line exploded, and Vortan revelled in the destructive fury of the gunship’s weapons.

‘Yes! Come and taste the wrath!’ he bellowed, stitching a line across the narrow

aperture into the defile. With a jerk and a grunt, he aimed the cannon upwards to

strafe the dwindling swarm of stingwings attempting to attack from above.

‘Watch the skies,’ he warned his comrades through the comm-feed.

Ar’gan nodded, but had his own problems. His autocannon’s drum mag was

empty but locked. He couldn’t free it to slam home another. Polino’s support fire

was desultory but no better than that. The captain skirted oblivion now and couldn’t be relied upon to hold down a trigger, let alone cover one side of the ravine.

Creatures were spilling into the gorge, a mutant soup of alien limbs, chitinous

appendages and snapping mandible claws. They were krootis aviana but they were also something else, something altogether more abhorrent.

Aspects that were distinctly avian persisted about the kroot, their long sloping

beaks and spine quills protruding from the backs of their heads. Long limbed, they had sharp claws and hooves, capable of impressive foot speed with the

ability to wield semi-complex weapons. Natural armour was not one of the

kroot’s usual traits but these creatures wore a sheath of chitin over their bodies

that provided some protection. Others had additional limbs that ended in

scything talons. Some were malformed facially, possessing glands not unlike

gills through which they could project flesh barbs or trailing hooks.

Despite their evolutionary advantages, an autocannon could render them down

into bio-matter easily enough, but only if it could actually fire.

Ar’gan railed at his misfortune, eager to cut them and trying to resist the urge to

draw blades and do just that. He was adept at close combat, more so than any of

his kill-team brothers. In one sheath he

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