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Cover

We Were Brothers – Richard Fox

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Huron Blackheart: Master of the Maelstrom’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

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.’

Straxis’ hand flexed inside his chainfist. He’d seized the relic weapon from a slain Howling Griffon during the last moment of true brotherhood between the Executioners and the Astral Claws. The chainblade’s teeth had never needed to be sharpened or replaced, but the energy field emitter built into the embossed Howling Griffons Chapter symbol had proven unreliable as of late. He’d refrained from carving off the engravings made by the previous owners so as not to upset the machine spirit within, but the emitter always managed to function poorly when he carried it into battle against still-loyal Adeptus Astartes. It bore the name Raptorian in bloodstained ceramite across the knuckles, and its teeth twitched and growled as it sensed the coming fight.

‘Their warp engines awaken,’ Rochnar warned. ‘We do not have long until the ship translates.’

Assault torpedoes leading the swarm fizzled out from Straxis’ rune overlay as the Rann’s Blade found its range.

‘I cannot tell if the Dark Gods are challenging me or laughing at me,’ Straxis muttered. He opened a channel to every craft in his swarm.

‘Heads. You will take every head of every slave, thrall and honourless cur of an Astartes on that ship. I demand it. Lord Huron demands it. Do not test me on this.’ He kept the channel open as assault leaders acknowledged the message with a range of curt words and long-winded proclamations, then closed it and flexed the fingers of his chainfist, revving the adamantine teeth.

‘Straxis, I’m never one to doubt your word,’ Rochnar said, ‘but I’m not aware of Lord Huron ever giving such… explicit orders. Particularly during a ship seizure.’

The Terminator lord ignited the energy field around his chainfist and revved the blade into a vicious howl. The sorcerer slunk back, sufficiently chided.

Without warning, an impact kicked Straxis’ torpedo hard to one side, sending it into a slow roll. A hull fragment burst through the deck and stuck into the power plant of a Terminator named Hirosas. Hirosas tried to reach back and remove the smoking metal, before Chyron struck the embedded shrapnel away with the barrel of his heavy flamer. Hirosas grunted thanks.

Damage runes from several torpedoes flashed on the inside of Straxis’ helm. He ordered the craft full of cultists to sprint ahead and draw fire from the Rann’s Blade. Many would overshoot the target and continue into the void for eternity. Better to lose slaves than the Astartes under Straxis’ command.

Adjusting the vector of his own craft, he ignited the melta array at its fore. The star-hot torches activated, but their course didn’t change.

Straxis’ cheek twitched as the projected point of impact flashed on a wire diagram of the enemy ship. The breach would be close to a macrocannon turret, not the sanctum where his quarry would likely hide.

Achilieus lunged against the restraint coil like a cyber-canid with a scent.

Straxis’ hearts beat faster and his haemastamen organ – tweaked with a slight modification by an Emperor’s Children chirurgeon – flooded his bloodstream with stimms as the distance to the loyalist’s hull diminished. The magma torches roared, flooding the compartment with heat. Plating glowed red, and Straxis felt his flesh sear against the soles of his boots.

He smiled, grinding his teeth as the torpedo struck, tore through the outer hull and impaled itself in the strike cruiser. Claw points in the prow ripped outwards on massive pistons, tearing away slag and the very bones of the Rann’s Blade.

The restraining coil slid off Straxis’ armour so fast it vaporised the red paint on his ceramite, exposing the gunmetal grey beneath. He thundered forward, his chainfist screaming and his combi-weapon’s meltagun hissing.

Activating the vox-worm he’d plundered from a dead Night Lord, Straxis howled a battle cry. ‘Executioners, you oath-breaking curs! Your reckoning is here!’

He crossed the threshold from the torpedo to the strike cruiser, stepped into smoke, and dropped through an opening several feet over the deck as fumes from burning metal and charcoaled flesh swept around him.

An ogryn slave cushioned Straxis’ landing, its arms severed as the vast bulk of his armour pulped the abhuman’s joints on impact. Straxis swept his combi-weapon through the smoke, blasting at the mass of human slaves milling about in the confusion of the assault torpedo’s entrance into the arming chamber of one of the Rann’s Blade’s macrocannons.

His retinue landed around him, flowing into an echelon with Straxis at the fore. The Terminator lord clamped the claws of his chainfist around the torso of a gunnery master wearing a blue-and-red tabard marked with the twin axes of the Executioners Chapter.

Straxis hauled him into the air, the terror in the human’s eyes evident behind the lenses of his rebreather mask.

‘Betrayers! Cowards! Lickspittle sycophants to the High Lords on Terra!’ Straxis snapped the elongated fingers of his chainfist together and pulped the gunnery master’s body before tossing the remaining mess against the bulkhead.

He surveyed the arming chamber. The macrocannon wouldn’t fire with its slave tenders dead and dying to the rest of his Chosen. Close by, a shell the size of a Rhino lay on a munition trolley, the equally wide breech of the cannon partially open.

‘Spike the gun,’ Straxis said, gesturing to Achilieus. ‘We’re not staying here.’

‘Soul flickers.’ Rochnar turned his combi-bolter to the bay doors. ‘They’re coming.’

Straxis lowered a shoulder and lurched towards the doors, building up speed and momentum as the thick hatches rolled open. He ducked forward, his pauldrons bending the metal of the doors inwards as he rumbled through the gap, smashing an armsman off her feet and crushing two more of her team behind her. He slashed his chainfist in a wide arc, bisecting one armsman from shoulder to hip and catching another by the bottom of his breastplate.

Shotgun slugs bounced off his armour as the survivors fired in a panic. Hotshot las bolts sputtered against his ceramite, close enough to send pinpricks of pain through his shoulder. Straxis thrust his chainfist’s blade into an armsman screaming defiance, impaling him. The loyalist’s body juddered as the teeth ground him into mush. He swung the corpse like a club, smashing more armsmen off their feet.

Bolt rounds from Straxis’ Terminators finished the rest off before the doors had finished opening. The chamber of the macrocannon had melted like an old candle from a single melta blast.

One armsman crawled away, augmented legs severed at the ankles.

‘Mine.’ Straxis stomped down the passageway and scooped the armsman up by the scruff of her neck. He felt the beat of her heart through his ceramite-clad fingers, too regular and too strong to be organic.

‘Where is Chaplain Thulsa Cane?’ Straxis asked.

‘He protects! Light of the Throne, shield my soul from the warp’s darkness. The Emperor prote–’

Straxis wrapped a thumb around her neck and cut off her prayer. ‘Little creature, you aren’t listening.’ He held her up so that they were face to face. ‘Where is Thulsa Cane? Where is the bastard who murdered my brothers?’

Her heartbeat continued at the same tempo, though he could smell her fear in the air. He lessened his grip around her throat ever so slightly.

‘My life for the Chapter. My sons for the–’ she gurgled.

Straxis flicked his thumb against her chin, severing her skull from her spine. He chided himself for giving the slave too clean and quick of a death. A vibration buzzed from her torso as her mechanical heart ceased functioning. He tossed the corpse aside like rubbish.

‘They know where we are,’ Straxis said. ‘Heartbeat transponders are a rather foolproof kill switch.’

‘Something worth fighting is coming for us?’ a Terminator named Egalpa asked, clicking his lightning claws together.

‘With me.’ Straxis stomped down the passageway, the machine spirit of his armour protesting at the strain he’d already placed on it. Transmissions from other boarding team leaders came to him erratically. The engine shrine was still under the loyalists’ control, though two teams were already cutting through the ship to bypass choke points. Fighting around the bridge continued.

Straxis lengthened his stride. This ship wouldn’t get away from. Not when he was this close to retribution.

A panel in the ceiling snapped open. Straxis glimpsed a krak grenade rattling down the murder hole and cursed himself for being lax. A sensor in the device scryed his ceramite bulk and detonated, sending a lance of blast-formed adamantine at him.

The explosion blossomed around a warp shield projected from Rochnar’s hand, mangling the ceiling. Straxis thrust his combi-weapon overhead and shot a blast of star-heat from his meltagun up into the murder hole. The extreme temperatures set off falling krak grenades dropped by defenders on the upper decks.

Heavy ceiling panels blew out from the explosions, pelting Straxis with red-hot shrapnel. Beside him, Achilieus snarled, a jagged hunk of smoking metal protruding from the front of his helmet like a horn. The Terminator broke the piece away, leaving a fragment still lodged in his skull.

Straxis barrelled towards the blast door at the end of the corridor, his chainfist growling. He punched the chainblade into the thick metal and carved out a messy furrow. He voxed his Corsairs leading the fight closest to the bridge. His patience waned quickly before Ixnian’s panting filled his helm.

‘My lord, Cawl’s toys are aboard,’ Ixnian said. ‘We’re teaching ourselves new ways to kill them.’

‘How long until you have the bridge under control?’ Straxis asked.

‘Difficult to say. Boran’s talon was supposed to secure the secondary plasma reactor and disable the shielding, but I found him and his squad missing their heads. Someone with talent is aboard, or the Executioners have the same ideas as us. But by the Dark Gods, I am enjoying this!’

‘It’s Cane, it has to be!’ Straxis pounded the blast door. ‘He won’t hide. Save him for me.’

The bark of bolter fire sounded over the channel along with Ixnian’s cackles.

‘Breach ready.’ Achilieus put his boot against the bulkhead. Another Terminator slashed through the hydraulics on the far side of the door and kicked it as Achilieus pushed the door down.

The hatch fell like a drawbridge cleft from its pulleys. It slammed to the deck, revealing a cacophony of las fire and bolter volleys as Straxis’ cultists traded las bolts and autogun rounds with the defenders of the Rann’s Blade.

These cultists had had most of their pain receptors disabled during the process of stitching them into their void suits, or they would have been entirely useless afterwards. Combat drugs drove them to slaughter while their near inability to feel pain made them decent – if expendable – shock troops. Most could sustain wounds that would disable normal humans before their biology failed.

A pack of them bounded from cover and ran through the dead zone between them and the loyalist defenders. Precision hits to the face knocked one back before he could take a second step. Another hurled a pair of grenades at the barricades before being cut to pieces. The third took a round to the abdomen then burst apart.

Straxis knew a bolter hit when he saw it. Loyalist Adeptus Astartes were in this part of the fight.

The grenades exploded into purple mist flecked with gold. Psychosis-inducing gas washed over the defenders. Warp-imbued particles swept into rebreathers, and their gunfire subsided. Straxis advanced into the wide passageway that ran down the spine of the ship. He fired his combi-weapon’s bolter into the mists on full-auto, aiming low in an attempt to preserve skulls and faces for his planned message to the Executioners.

A single bolter round shot through the gloom, curling the smoke behind it. Achilieus rocked back on his heels, a hunk of ceramite blown out of his chest.

‘For we are come!’

A Space Marine in silver-and-deep-blue armour charged forth, a bolt rifle at his shoulder. Straxis noted the warrior’s abnormal height and unusual mark of armour. He’d heard rumours of some new mutation from the Martian dungeons and the word ‘Primaris’ whispered by the few Red Corsairs who’d returned from raids far from the Maelstrom. Along with whispers of another, impossible name. This loyalist was the first of the new breed he’d ever encountered.

Straxis flicked his combi-weapon up, ready to test the new armour’s resistance to old-fashioned bolts, when the weapon jerked in his hand, struck by a round from the Primaris Marine’s bolt rifle. Straxis let off a wild shot and the recoil fouled his aim for the instant the newcomer needed to close the distance.

Straxis thrust his chainfist forward, but the blade snarled through emptiness, missing the loyalist’s helm as the Executioner slid under the strike. A bolt shot struck the chin of his helm, shattering the vox-grille and respirator. He swung his chainfist back blindly as he twisted around, catching the Primaris Marine’s pauldron. Ceramite flecks spat away like bullets from an assault cannon. His opponent rode the force and used it to twist around. A serrated blade flashed in the light, arcing for his left eye-lens.

Straxis caught the point between the melta and bolter barrels of his combi-weapon. He forced the foe’s knife hand up and smiled at the warrior through his broken helm. He spat acid from the Betcher’s gland in his mouth into the Primaris’ visor, melting the outer layers of the helm’s lenses instantly.

The Terminator lord twisted the combat knife out of his foe’s hand and jabbed the knuckles of his chainfist into the centre of the aquila in the loyalist’s chest. He powered on the disruption field and blasted the Primaris Marine off his feet and onto the waiting lightning claws of one of his Terminators. The Red Corsair spread his arms apart, ripping the warrior to pieces.

‘You needed the Machine God to thicken your blood? And your kind are still weaklings,’ spat Straxis.

More Primaris Marines flooded into the passageway. Straxis brought his chainfist up to cover the gap in his armour, several hits ricocheting from the Howling Griffons weapon.

A gout of green flame roiled through the last wisps of psychotropic gas and washed over the loyalists. Two staggered and fell, while some retreated through the access door they had arrived from. Corpses twitched as pustules ripened and burst in their bodies, emitting noxious fumes. Flesh, already shrivelled and blackened from the flame, crumbled away to dark dust.

Straxis snapped his helm to stare at Chyron as the Terminator screwed in a fresh bottle of tainted promethium.

‘You wanted heads, lord. You said nothing about their faces still being attached,’ Chyron said.

‘They broke off their attack too quickly.’ Rochnar flicked the side of his helm and a small hatch fell open for a forked tongue to dart out and taste the air. ‘The warp engine parlays with the Mandeville point… My vision is clouded.’

‘They’ve tucked their tails between their legs to run faster,’ Achilieus muttered. Straxis checked the corridor markings with his memories of this class of strike cruiser and turned to barred blast doors on the other side of the passage.

‘Mortals! Breach,’ he ordered, flicking a digit to a door that would lead to a ramp up to the engine shrine. His servants rushed to obey, some limping on amputated legs and others bleeding to death as they crossed the opening.

Straxis bent a knee and set his combi-weapon atop the severed leg of the Primaris Marine he’d had torn apart. He set his palm against the deck and felt the vibrations.

‘The High Lords’ slaves approach on the deck below,’ he said. ‘Heavy, but not Terminators. Too fast and too many to be Centurions or a coffin-walker. The dorsal cannons have retracted into the hull for warp transit.’

‘A ruse?’ The sorcerer shifted uneasily from one foot to another. ‘If the Tyrant’s Grasp has ceased firing, then why–’

‘Silence.’ Straxis cocked an ear to the deck. ‘They’ve stopped moving? Why?’ He snatched up his combi-weapon.

The answer came a split second later when explosives attached to the roof on the deck below ignited, shearing through the beams between levels. Straxis and his Terminators fell amidst sparking power cables and accumulated rot and dust.

Straxis spread his feet and managed to land upright in a choking cloud of dust and ozone-laced smoke. The first hint that the Executioners were there was a wave of promethium that struck with the fury of a solar flare. His Terminator armour’s machine spirit cried out in defiance, joints in his knees and elbows fusing together as if they were under a Techmarine’s torch.

Moments later, the flames died back and the curses of his Chosen took their place.

‘You could never beat us on the field of battle!’ Straxis didn’t wait for his foe to reveal themselves. He stomped through debris at hulking shadows. An Executioner in top-heavy armour strode towards him, flamers attached to twin power fists sputtering. The helm and the hump covering the plasma reactor was a crude mockery of his own Terminator armour.

‘Look how weak you’ve become!’ Straxis loosed a blast from his meltagun, striking the faux-Terminator across one fist, severing it at the elbow. He raised Raptorian and directed it into a downward punch, the chainblade angled at the Executioner’s faceplate.

The other power fist swung up, stopping the Red Corsair’s blow cold. The loyalist’s helm was a tighter, more efficient reflection of his own. The clash of ceramite and flash of power fists sounded around them as the Chosen closed with the ambushers.

‘You curs hid from us for a century,’ Straxis spat. ‘Did you think we’d forget what you did to us? What we lost?’ He leaned into the blow, forcing the chainblade closer to the wounded Executioner’s helm. This new breed of Astartes was strong, he had to give them that.

‘A traitor’s words mean nothing!’ the Primaris Marine bellowed. ‘For the Emp–’

Straxis shot the warrior in the knee, buckling it to one side. The Executioner lost his leverage on his remaining power fist and the chainblade struck between the helm and the gorget. Straxis revved Raptorian’s teeth and gouged through the thinner armour, shredding the Primaris Marine’s neck and destroying his gene-seed implant.

‘The Salamanders battle-barge was ours!’ Straxis shouted as another Executioner struck out at him amidst the smoke and flame. The power fist glanced off his chest, sending a kick of pressure through the armour that cracked his fused ribcage. ‘It would have made all the difference against the High Lords and their good little Astartes pets at Badab, and you stole it from us! For what?’

He struck the palm of his chainfist against the Primaris Marine’s helm, clamping on to the faceplate as the chainblade tore through his power plant. Straxis ripped the helm off and fired his storm bolter point-blank into his sternum. Ceramite chipped and shattered before rounds punched through the armour and eviscerated the warrior within. He collapsed to the dust and detritus covering the floor.

The dying Space Marine stared at Straxis with utter contempt. A single service stud over one brow told him the loyalist was too young to have fought at Badab.

‘What lies do your Chaplains tell you of Badab? Of how you betrayed the Astral Claws when we stood against the High Lords’ oppression? When you were called to fulfil your oath to your brothers! How do you fill that lack of honour in your twin hearts?’ Straxis bent forward and tapped a clawed fingertip against the Space Marine’s chest.

‘The guilt of heresy weighs heavy on the soul,’ the Executioner choked out. ‘The heretic reaps what he sows. You harvest nothing but guilt and dishonour!’

Straxis swept his fist’s chainblade across the Space Marine’s neck. The severed head rolled to Rochnar’s bloody boots. The other Terminator picked the head up and mounted it on an empty spike atop Straxis’ power plant.

‘Achilieus is over there.’ Rochnar pointed into the gloom, his forearm crushed and bleeding, but reknitting itself as he spoke. ‘Perhaps he died well?’

‘Bah.’ Straxis crunched through debris and found the Terminator. His armour had been pummelled, and dents and gouges from a flurry of blows had left his body oozing from rents and gouges like an old can of grox meat kicked around a commissary floor.

‘Where are his kills?’ Straxis asked.

Egalpa sheared his lightning claws – stained deep red – together and motioned towards a pile of blue-and-silver armour.

‘A mediocre end.’ Straxis shook his head. ‘We’re on deck tercius-ten. We can bypass the–’

Rochnar’s eye-lenses lit up with eldritch energy as the ship bucked beneath them.

‘Captain Zuborra fires on the Geller field generators. If we cannot secure the ship soon, he’ll ensure it never returns to the lapdogs,’ the sorcerer said.

‘The Imperials will overload the main reactor to keep us from taking her. Come! I will not pick through pieces of this ship to find parts of Thulsa Cane when I can tear him apart myself.’ Straxis stomped towards a bulkhead and punched his chainfist into the metal. Raptorian revved and cut through the plating.

‘What of Cawl’s dead? Corpsemaster Garreon would take particular interest in them,’ Chyron said. He punched his power fist against the seam cut by Straxis and wrenched a fresh breach open.

‘Garreon has enough playthings. Better to please Lord Huron than that deviant’s curiosity – you prattle while your lord toils!’ Straxis twisted the chainblade and sawed through a new axis. Power lines burst into sparks that melded with gouts of steam as a rusted-out pipe collapsed under the assault.

Egalpa thundered towards the seam and lowered his head to ram through the breach. He shot through and landed hard on one pauldron, then twisted into a shoulder roll, his lightning claws leaving eight lines on the deck behind him.

‘Better.’ Straxis plodded forward, the damaged joints of his Terminator armour unable to keep pace with his hatred. He activated the vox-worm still embedded in his armour’s machine spirit.

‘Cane! Face me, you craven, jelly-spined idolater! Where is the Executioner who stabbed his battle-brother in the back? Does the Corpse-Emperor bless this cowardice!’ The chainblade revved, adding its purr to the broadcast. ‘You call yourself “Death Speaker”? Come speak with me.’

Straxis stopped before the sealed and barred doors of the ship’s sanctum, where the Executioners kept records of their battles. The door hissed of a protective force field as faint blue light reflected off long ribbons of purity seals and scrimshawed skulls.

‘Rochnar, the Executioners’ Librarians are idle and force their Chaplains to keep notes. Get us in,’ Straxis said.

‘It’s a vocal cipher. I don’t even need the warp for this.’ The sorcerer, once a Codicier of the Mentors Chapter, slammed the base of his staff into the deck.

Straxis tightened the grip on his combi-weapon.

‘Cane! Face me! We stood together, our Chapters linked by blood and oath. We called you to stand by us in the defence of Badab and the Executioners turned against Huron. Your oath was to us, to the Astral Claws… We were brothers. Brothers who you betrayed! If I’d been there when you–’

The force shield popped with a whiff of ozone and the doors to the sanctum creaked open. Shrines to individual Executioners stood in neat rows, trophies and fulfilled oath seals adorning each. Several had servo-skulls wobbling in the air next to them, descending holographic text annotating the warriors’ accomplishments.

‘Chyron. Announce us,’ Straxis said.

Flames that stank of miasma washed over the nearest shrine, annihilating the Executioner’s honour roll forever.

Straxis strode into the sanctum and casually punched his chainfist through a stone wall engraved with the likeness of another long-dead Executioner.

‘You were there when I took this trophy from the Howling Griffons. Did you want it for yourself? Come and claim it!’ Straxis shouted as a group of malformed serfs, likely failed neophytes, charged at him armed with nothing but blades and curses.

‘Chaff!’ Straxis eviscerated them with wide sweeps of his fist, insulting their final moments by refusing to even activate the chainblade. ‘This is how you defend your holy sanctum? I will make it a breeding pit for Neverborn!’

White light flooded the sanctum as doors at the rear were flung open. A dark-armoured figure with a long relic blade over one shoulder stepped inside. The new arrival bore the still-bleeding heads of several Red Corsairs, hanging by chains from his belt, along with a glowing bell that did not chime. A red cloth tied around the mouth of his skull mask lifted into a point behind his head, the ancient symbol of a headsman. A trio of battle-scarred Executioners with tall shields and gleaming power swords marched in step behind the Chaplain.

‘Now you face me, Cane.’ Straxis’ jaw squeezed shut, bone teeth cracking against ceramite replacements. The Executioner was taller than he remembered, improved by Cawl’s bio-craft.

‘Lord,’ Rochnar hissed, ‘the warp whispers in my ear. He–’

The relic blade was lifted from the Chaplain’s shoulder, both the warrior’s hands gripping the hilt. There was a flash of light and the Chaplain blurred across the sanctum, swinging his sword straight towards Straxis’ exposed chin.

Straxis overloaded the power field in his chainfist as he raised it to parry, the invisible force sending the blow up and to one side. The corner of the Executioner’s blade bit into the ceramite next to his head, and the momentum twisted the Terminator lord around. He stomped one foot into place as the relic blade was pried loose, sending a hunk of his armour spinning off into the melee between his Terminators and the Chaplain’s retinue.

‘Answer me!’ Straxis fired his combi-weapon’s bolter on full-auto, using the brute force of his armour to counter the recoil and send a flurry of shells at the Chaplain. The Executioner raised the hilt next to his face, angling the flat of his blade down as the power field running its length flared, deflecting every shot into the deck.

The Chaplain rotated the hilt and pulled it close across his body, striking the blade against the melta chamber on Straxis’ combi-weapon. The tank ruptured, spewing straight into Straxis’ helm. His faceplate smouldered as globules melted through the ceramite.

Straxis hurled the combi-weapon at the Chaplain and used his now-free hand to rip his ruined faceplate away. The Executioner swatted the weapon aside with contempt. The Terminator lord held his chainfist high to guard his exposed face, watching his foe with a single eye over Raptorian’s edge.

‘You lack the courage to even speak to me? Our kind know no fear, but your hearts must be black with guilt. Was it easy, Cane? Was it easy to turn your back on your brothers? Speak!’ Straxis angled the chainfist so his foe could see the embossed Howling Griffons Chapter icon painted over with the Red Corsairs’ clenched fist. ‘Recognise this? I’ll give you a closer look!’

There was another flash of light and Straxis felt time stretch in ways he’d only experienced in the warp. He activated his armour’s force shield generator as fast as his inhuman physiology could manage.

The Executioner’s blade edge hung mere inches from his fist, the white light of straining power fields illuminating both warriors. Straxis made out the fury in the Chaplain’s eyes as he fought to overpower the shield. The blade inched closer to the chainfist.

‘Answer me! Did you lose your tongue in the hundred years you’ve run from me?’ Straxis snarled. The Chaplain moved ever closer, cold fury behind the lenses of his skull-masked helm.

The shield emitter warbled, and Straxis had the sudden realisation that his soul might go screaming into the warp, vengeance forever denied to him.

Then the shield failed forever and the Executioner’s blade bit deeply into the back of his chainfist, cutting through the engraved symbols.

‘You won’t even speak to your brother?’ Straxis snarled.

The Executioner wrenched the blade free and brought it up for a final stroke.

‘You call this honour, Cane?’ Straxis let the chainfist fall to his side.

Bolter rounds snapped past Straxis and sparked off the Executioner’s breastplate and arms. The downstroke sliced a neat slab off of Straxis’ pauldron. The blade’s tip buried itself in the deck as one round exploded in the Executioner’s armpit, mangling the limb. The Chaplain bent over the chainfist, stunned.

Straxis grunted and activated his chainfist. He twisted its blade into an uppercut and impaled the Chaplain through the spine. The teeth tore through his back, and Straxis lifted the Executioner off the deck and held him aloft, roaring defiance at lost honour.

At last, the Terminator lord slammed the Executioner down and pinned his sword arm to the deck with his boot.

The sounds of battle had ended. The reek of burnt blood and atomised ceramite hung heavy in the air.

Hirosas limped over, the twin barrels of his combi-bolter smoking.

‘Apologies, Lord Straxis… I lost battle-brothers to this mongrel too,’ the once Astral Claw said.

‘Bah.’ Straxis motioned for the Executioner’s blade and Chyron smacked the pommel into his hand. Straxis set the edge a few inches from the Chaplain’s neck. ‘Ready to talk now, Cane?’

Blood gurgled out of the bared teeth of the skull mask.

‘No? Then die.’ Straxis sliced the Executioner’s blade across the deck, neatly severing the head. The blade felt heavy in his hand; blood boiled and spattered in the power field crackling along the edge.

Straxis stabbed the tip into the helm and brought the sword up to his face so he could gaze into the skull mask’s lenses.

‘I’ll add you to my trophies. Let you watch as I finish off the rest of your mongrels. You think your silence was some sort of victory? My revenge won’t stop with you, Cane, your entire Chapter will fall!’ Straxis pulled the helm from the cranium within and froze.

The dead Chaplain was young, not even a service stud over his brow… and he had two organic eyes. No surgical scars to tell of a vat-grown replacement for Cane’s bionic right eye.

‘No… No. This isn’t him.’ Straxis let the sword clatter against the deck. The brief moment of elation he’d had fizzled away, replaced with a cold pit of hatred and malice. ‘This whole ship is nothing but whelps.’

‘Indeed, sire,’ Rochnar said behind him. ‘Though there is something you’d be interested in before we begin our desecration of this chamber.’

Straxis turned around. The rest of the Chaplain’s retinue lay dead, though they’d taken an equal number of his Terminators into the warp with them. The sorcerer stood next to a shrine, his staff floating in the air beside him.

A single shrine was adorned with more battle honours and kill trophies than any other. A Chaplain’s skull mask – cracked down one side and the right eye cut out to accommodate a cybernetic replacement – hung in the centre of the shrine. Chaplain Thulsa Cane’s name was cut into stone in the plinth.

‘No. No, he can’t escape me.’ Straxis strained to move towards the shrine, his Terminator armour barely functioning. ‘Tell me he’s alive!’

‘The helm bears a psychic scar of injury… but not death,’ Rochnar said. ‘The most recent addition to this shrine is only a few standard years old. He may yet live, my lord.’

Straxis’ cheek twitched as he reached for a trophy, one placed amongst ork teeth, a broken aeldari soul stone and a slew of other, less worthy baubles. He plucked an adamantine claw from the shrine, the Chapter symbol of the now-dead Astral Claws Chapter embossed on it.

The claw’s twin hung from Straxis’ gorget.

‘I will find you, Thulsa Cane.’ Straxis tightened his fist around the claw. ‘Even if I have to kill every last Executioner to do it.’

‘My Lord Straxis… the bridge is secure. The ship is ours,’ Ixnian said through the Red Corsairs’ vox. ‘The Navigator is secured, and still has her head…’

‘Spare her, for now,’ Straxis said. He glanced around at the loyalist corpses and did a quick calculation from memory of the boarding action. ‘I have enough to make my point. I’m sending Rochnar to the bridge to persuade the Navigator to consider her options.’

Straxis pried Chaplain Cane’s helm from the shrine. He stared into the shattered eye-lenses, tapping a thumb against the skull visage. The relics in the sanctum, the entire vessel seized for Lord Huron’s service – either were boons that would propel him higher into the Blackheart’s favour.

None of that mattered. The Executioners who had betrayed him still lived. They still lived until Straxis could find them. All of them.

‘This isn’t over, betrayer. If I can’t find you, then maybe you should come find me.’ Straxis smiled, baring pointed teeth.

<<BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION: ORDO HERETICUS ROUTING PRIORITY AZURE9-9

<<REF. BADAB CONCLAVE ADDENDUM SCRIBE TASK L*CC9

<<ISIN CHOIR ROUTING-PURGE ALL EXPOSED SERVITOR//ASTROPATH SUB TRUST LEVEL ALPHA AFTER PROCESSING

<<TEXT AS FOLLOWS: SALVATION POD RECOVERED BEARING EXECUTIONERS CHAPTER CODE CIPHERS NEAR SACRISTAN SYSTEM MANDEVILLE POINT. INVESTIGATION BY ROGUE TRADER VESSEL UNDER COMMAND OF INQUISITOR VOLPONE RECOVERED ADEPTUS ASTARTES RELIC REF: THULSA CANE [STATUS: [[REDACTED BY [REDACTED]] FUSED TO SALVATION POD BEACON. RELIC USED AS ANCHOR POINT FOR PROFANE ICON CONSISTING OF EIGHT IMMATERIUM-TAINTED CHAINS RADIATING FROM CENTRE. SEVERED HEADS OF ADEPTUS ASTARTES AND CREW (ASSUMED) OF VESSEL DESIGNATE ‘RANN’S BLADE’ FUSED TO ARMS STRETCHING 1,000–1,400 FEET.

<<SUB FILE REFERENCE: RELIC RECOVERED IN THE CENTRE OF PROFANE ARTICLE ALTERED WITH TALONS BEARING ASTRAL CLAWS INSIGNIA [CHAPTER EXTINCT REF. FILE: QX-I37]

ACTION: VESSEL PRESUMED LOST WITH ALL HANDS. SUPPRESSION OF ALL FURTHER INVESTIGATION. OFFICIAL DENIAL OF KNOWLEDGE TO ADEPTUS ASTARTES INQUIRY.

<<THOUGHT: FIND BLISS IN YOUR IGNORANCE

About the Author

Richard Fox is the author of over fifty novels and is best known for the Ember War Saga. ‘We Were Brothers’ is his first short story for Black Library. He lives in fabulous Las Vegas with his wife and three boys, where he paints entirely too many Deathwatch miniatures.

An extract from Huron Blackheart: Master of the Maelstrom.

Blood flows.

Not in veins, where evolution has dictated that it should, but over metal decking pitted with the gradual ravages of oxidisation that no amount of care could prevent. It dribbles down walls, from where it arced after being brutally released from its fleshy prison. It seeps into cracks and crevices. It pools in slight depressions, and drips through gratings to drizzle onto whatever lies beneath. The metallic tang of it is everywhere, mixing with the stink of burned hair, the chemical reek of promethium fumes, the sharp scent of cordite, and hints of ozone as the charged blades of power weapons gradually fuse the atoms of the air.

And through the blood comes the Blood Reaver.

Once, Lugft Huron was the Chapter Master of the Astral Claws. Once, he was a towering Space Marine warrior, the galaxy’s image of nobility and righteousness: at least, to those parts of the galaxy that cowered behind the shield his warriors made from their bodies, and their guns, and their will. Once, Huron believed in the Imperium, and in the Emperor, and in his Chapter’s duties: at least in his own way.

But in the Imperium there is little tolerance for any way other than that which the Imperium itself dictates. The tool that does not completely fit its role is eliminated; and if, like Lugft Huron, the tool is too tough and too stubborn to be properly eliminated, it is cast out.

The problem with that, of course, is that those who are cast out can come back. And when they do, their bodies and their guns and their will are no longer a shield, but a sword aimed for the heart.

Huron Blackheart looks around and sees death: not just death, but slaughter. This is not a military outpost; not an Astra Militarum barracks, an Adeptus Astartes fortress-monastery, or a convent of the Adepta Sororitas. This is Adeptus Mechanicus mining station Delta-Kappa-39006, plundering the mineral resources of an asteroid with a diameter of roughly three hundred miles, and its defences have been easily overwhelmed. The ships tasked with its protection were annihilated by the Spectre of Ruin within moments of its exit from the warp, and the Red Corsairs have overrun the station itself. Huron could have targeted the astropath’s tower, to ensure that the station could not call for help, but he has not cared enough to do so.

Let the blind psykers scream. Abaddon the Despoiler has ripped the galaxy apart, and the Imperium has far greater matters to attend to. No one is coming here.

‘Progress?’ Huron rasps. His voice is as damaged as the rest of him. What was once a commanding basso boom is now a phlegm-edged rattle. Sometimes it betrays him altogether, until his underlings can coax his half-dead flesh back into synergy with the mechanical implants that allow him some measure of control over his own body. These are souvenirs of events in the Palace of Thorns: a reminder of how the Imperium treats its own when they dare question an unfair system.

Still, damaged or not, Huron’s voice is acknowledged and obeyed just as fast as it ever was. Perhaps faster.

‘We’ve taken most of the complex, lord,’ a man replies, dropping to one knee, heedless of the bloody remains of a Mechanicus defender within inches of his leg.

The man is wearing a uniform that once belonged to a member of the Mordian Iron Guard, now with the aquila torn off and the epaulettes replaced by loyalist skulls. Perhaps he is its original owner. The Red Corsairs are a warband: the strong core of it is made up of renegade Space Marines, both from the old Astral Claws and those of other Chapters who have traded their former colours in for Huron’s, but great numbers of mortal warriors have also flocked to his banner over the decades. Huron welcomes all those who will fight in his name; or at least those who do so well.

‘“Most”?’ he repeats, and the ragged team of men and women stiffen. There are a dozen or so of them, armed with lasguns and autoguns, and Huron could tear through them all in a matter of seconds. They know this.

‘One part holds out, lord,’ the kneeling man says hoarsely. Perhaps he fears that Huron’s power axe will take his head, or the Tyrant’s Claw will envelop him in its crackling fingers and crush the life from him, or Huron will trigger the heavy flamer embedded in the palm of that power gauntlet and simply roast him alive. ‘There is only one access corridor, and the defenders are fiercer than we anticipated – combat automata, at least three of them.’ He begins to speak faster, perhaps hoping to head off the displeasure of the renegade standing over him. ‘If the lords of your brethren were willing, I’m sure they could attack that part of the complex from the outside, but we lack void suits and so–’

‘Enough.’ Huron cuts him off with a dismissive wave of fingers from the Tyrant’s Claw, and the man falls silent. Huron can hear his heart pounding, can see the pulse of the vein in his neck as his blood courses through him. Human blood, mortal blood; so very different from that which cycles through Huron’s twin hearts, and yet the basis for it.

Or so Huron presumes. He has been in the Maelstrom for years now, in that rift where the warp bleeds through and has its way with realspace. There is no predicting how the warp will change you: it defies logic, defies science, defies reason. The man kneeling in front of him, in fear of his life, may have already been altered. Perhaps his blood is no longer human, either. He came to the Red Corsairs as a weak mortal, the sort of malleable clay the warp can twist without effort.

Those possessed of a stronger will, on the other hand, can be harder to change; and there are few beings in the galaxy with a will stronger than that of Huron Blackheart. Most warriors, even those of the Adeptus Astartes, would have succumbed to the injuries he took in the retreat from the Palace of Thorns, rather than live on as he has. Part of that is due to a potent mix of spite and his indomitable spirit. Part of that is due to the skill of his loyal warriors Armenneus Valthex and Lord Apothecary Garreon, who worked to save him when he lay wounded. And part of that is because of the bargain Huron has struck.

Click here to buy Huron Blackheart: Master of the Maelstrom.

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