A seventh warrior in black arrived, this one a Blood Angel. Then an eighth, an Ultramarine.
Time in the Monitus paused. The hall filled with the power of significance.
Warfist stepped forward. He moved to the centre of the hall. He spoke, the wind-cured rasp of his voice stretching across the Monitus.
‘Bear witness, brothers!’ he called. ‘Mark what is happening! This is a day the Imperium will remember.’ He was one Space Marine among many, yet in declaring the importance of what was happening, he became its nexus. All eyes turned to Warfist. All voices spoke to him.
‘An omen,’ said another Space Wolf on the other side of the hall.
‘It is more than that,’ Warfist said.
‘We have done this,’ said Abathar. ‘It is not visited upon us. We have taken this action. We have made this choice.’
‘And the choice has weight beyond the acts of a single brother,’ Warfist continued. ‘One choice, multiplied. This is a truth.’
‘So it is,’ said a Blood Angel nearby. Abathar recognised him as Forcas. He had seen the name on the list of members of his designated kill-team. Forcas’ armour was still red. ‘Can any of us doubt this truth? When it appears to us so clearly, and with such force?’
‘Was this truly a choice, then?’ Abathar wondered. ‘We were guided by the same circumstances, impulses and realities.’
‘Perhaps we have made our own omen, then,’ said Warfist. ‘If we have, its weight is all the greater.’
Forcas was nodding. ‘I will do as you have done,’ he said.
‘As will I,’ the other Space Wolf shouted.
The call was taken up. The Monitus rang with the oaths of a grim unity. The individual squads came together. The assembled Space Marines formed an arc before Warfist and the great statues.
Abathar observed his fellow warriors with growing awe as the moments succeeded each other with ever greater import. There was never doubt as to the ultimate unity of purpose of all the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes. Every battle-brother, no matter how estranged he might be from those in another Chapter, stood for the defence of the Emperor. On Ullanor, there had been the forging of many forces into one devoted to a single immediate goal. Here, though, was something else again. Here, the unity was not institutional. It was being forged at the level of the individual. There would be friction between members of the kill-teams. Abathar had no illusions about himself, or how he would feel fighting in the same squad as a Space Wolf.
And yet…
What is this thing we are becoming?
Born of death. Forged in death. Living memoria of lost brothers, returning in anger.
‘What are we?’ Warfist roared. The question demanded an answer, but it was shouted with the certainty of the inevitability of that answer.
‘We are witness!’ said Forcas, and Abathar heard his thoughts present and past being spoken by others.
Here, now, we are one, he thought. We are this new weapon.
‘We watch from death,’ said the Ultramarine in black.
We are vigilance.
We are vengeance.
We are the judgement come for the xenos challenger.
There was such clamour in his mind, in his soul and in the hall that Abathar could not tell if the words came from within or without. Perhaps they were both. Internal need had led to an external manifestation on his armour, and on that of other battle-brothers. They were the example. They were the clarity of black.
Space Wolf, Dark Angel, Blood Angel and Ultramarine had spoken with a single voice.
‘We are the Deathwatch!’
The words rang out above the others, given strength by their iron truth. It was a moment before Abathar realised the voice was his.
‘Deathwatch!’ Warfist repeated.
‘Deathwatch!’ said Forcas.
Deathwatch. The word, the name, the truth was shouted by every warrior in the Monitus. It was the moment of creation. That which had been shattered on Ullanor had taken on a new shape, renewed of purpose.
Deathwatch. It was a blade aimed at the throat of the Beast.
The clouds parted. The attack moon appeared, as if in anger at the challenge. The roars grew louder yet.
Deathwatch.
Abathar shouted the name, and it was a mission. It was a calling. It was an identity. Sachael had been correct. Abathar was a Dark Angel. Nothing would change that. Nothing could. But he was also this new thing. As his armour bore the colours of two allegiances, so did his being. There was no contradiction. The Deathwatch was formed of disparate pieces, and it would depend on their separate identities to create its own.
What have we become? The full answer would come in time. But the name was here, defined by the crucible of sacrifice and vengeance. The one and the many had become synonymous.
Deathwatch.
The refrain was a thunder strong far beyond sound. It shook the Stilicho Tower. It cracked the air over the Imperial Palace. It rose to the sky. Towards the attack moon. It was an answer to the endless shout.
I AM SLAUGHTER, the Beast exulted.
And the warriors of many Chapters said, Fear us.
‘You want me to go back,’ Galatea Haas said.
‘Yes,’ Koorland said.
They were in the barracks of the Adeptus Arbites. Despite her rise in rank, Haas spent most of her time in this quadrant. Her authority now extended to most of the Arbitrators still in the continent-sized palace. She was Proctor of the Primus Imperialis Division, and she looked exhausted. The numbers of the Adeptus Arbites had been so badly cut by the Proletarian Crusade that their efficiency was a shadow of what it had been. Haas’ office reflected the constraints under which she laboured. It was bare except for a battered desk, a wooden chair, an equipment footlocker, and a massive vox-array.
Koorland found himself comparing the officer before him to the Grand Provost Marshal in the Great Chamber. He did not doubt Zeck’s skill. His ability to process vast amounts of data was more than impressive, and he had a keen strategic mind. It was the uses to which Zeck’s skill was put that inspired Koorland’s contempt. Had Zeck ever been something more than the political animal he was now? Koorland had his doubts. To become a High Lord, Zeck would have had to concentrate first and foremost on the goals of his ambition. His effectiveness as an administrator would have been a by-product of his personal desires. In Haas, Koorland saw a career take the form of a calling. He recognised her driven gaze. It was a product of duty and of loss.
She greeted the news that she was being asked to return to the attack moon with a grim, tight-lipped calm, as if she had been expecting this conversation. She did not ask if she had a choice. She said, ‘You’re going inside again.’
‘Yes, deeper. Small teams. This will be an infiltration.’
‘I see. What is my role?’
‘We will be looking for control centres and power sources. You are more familiar with the interior than anyone else still living.’
‘I understand.’ She tapped her shock maul where it hung from her belt. She took a breath. ‘I shall be ready to embark when you command.’
‘Thank you, proctor. It would have been understandable if you had been reluctant.’ Understandable, though reluctance would not have kept her on Terra. She was needed, and Koorland had been prepared to order her participation in the mission. Presenting her with a request first had been a courtesy, and a mark of his respect for what she had survived and what she had accomplished. He was pleased the request had been enough.
‘Reluctant?’ Haas said. ‘May I speak freely, Lord Commander?’
‘Please do.’
‘The prospect of returning there fills me with horror.’ She spoke calmly, her voice and her gaze steady. There was a faint twitch in her right eye. It was the only expression of what she was really feeling. ‘But I joined the Proletarian Crusade for a reason. I had a task, and that task is incomplete.’