Perhaps this mission was not completely mad.
The tunnel they were in was almost wholly dark. A few guttering lumen globes dangled from cables. They were widely spaced. Between them hung the broken husks of many others.
‘This region is no longer used,’ Simmias said. He gestured at the cables. ‘There is illumination here by chance, not design. The power is going everywhere, even where it is no longer needed.’
‘But what was this used for?’ said Vepar. ‘Wherever it begins, it leads only to the shaft. What use is that for vehicles?’
‘The tunnel is for construction,’ Haas answered. ‘They build fast. The big passages allow them to mobilise quickly.’
‘Indeed,’ said Koorland. ‘Look how quickly they rebuilt after our attack.’ To Haas, he said, ‘There have likely been considerable changes. We have an approximate location on the auspex. Do you think you can take us there?’
‘I haven’t been there, but I can show you the best way to get around.’ She moved further along the tunnel, sticking to the right-hand wall. ‘Here,’ she said, pointing up.
There was an opening just below her head height on the wall. Haas reached up and pulled herself inside. Koorland and the others followed. It was just large enough for a Space Marine to walk in a crouch. There was no light here at all, though Koorland’s helm lamp picked out more tangles of cables and conduits on the low ceiling of the passageway.
‘I’ve seen the little creatures use these,’ she said. ‘There’s room for many of them, and these shafts keep them out of the way of the large orks.’
‘Vermin,’ said Icegrip.
‘Cunning vermin,’ Hanniel answered. ‘They will need to be silenced quickly. The point is not to bring the full horde down on us. We are coming as a shadow among the greenskins.’
The Space Wolf grunted, acquiescing. ‘A shadow with teeth,’ he said.
Koorland showed Haas the auspex. The readings were marked by numerous power surges. Three were singled out — two were close together, one much larger than the other. The energy source furthest away was the known quantity. It fluctuated moment to moment, winking out of existence then becoming explosively bright, more intense than any other signal on the screen. It was the gate. The orks had reopened it. The third kill-team would close it again, this time forever.
The other two targets were the ones whose locations were approximate guesses, reached through a combination of analysis of power signatures and Haas’ memories of her imprisonment. Koorland pointed to the larger of the two clustered targets. This, he hoped, was the attack moon’s power source. ‘Can you find the way?’ he asked.
‘I think so. I only saw it once. But there is a kind of order to the pathways here. Things flow to and from that location.’
‘Show us, then,’ said Koorland.
The shadows with teeth moved off.
The Penitent Wrath dropped Thane’s squad on a rough platform just outside a tunnel so ragged it would have seemed natural if the walls had not been made of patched-together stone and iron. The five Space Marines entered the crevice. It made a sharp turn almost immediately, then another, its path nothing more than a fault line between walls. Within seconds, the squad vanished from sight of the launch shaft.
The passageway angled left, then dropped down, and kept sloping downward.
‘This is taking us in the wrong direction,’ Asger Warfist said.
‘I know,’ said Thane. The extrapolated target was a control complex, located above the presumed power source. The mission was already riddled with uncertainty and guesswork. Moving down and away from the goal only added to the frustration. Thane played his helm lamp over the walls ahead, looking for any kind of exit.
‘There,’ said Abathar.
Thane stopped and looked up at the spot the Dark Angels Techmarine had isolated. Twenty metres up, where the sloping walls of the tunnel almost met, two openings faced each other.
‘No bridge,’ said Straton, the Ultramarine. ‘Do the greenskins leap over the gap in the dark?’
‘I suggest this passage is a result of a shift in the walls,’ Abathar said. ‘That tunnel is not likely to be still in use.’
‘I think you’re right,’ said Forcas. The Blood Angels Librarian pointed to a spot on the floor of the fissure, directly below the broken tunnel. Three ork bodies lay broken, smashed open against the raised, jagged edges of metal plating.
‘How do we get up there?’ Straton asked.
Thane watched Abathar examine the right-hand wall. Its surface was rough, a contusion of folds and cracks. He fired up the plasma cutter on his right servo-arm and played it against the wall. The light stabbed at the eyes in the gloom. It took only a few seconds for the cutter to melt through the stone and metal and form a rough handhold. Abathar looked at his handiwork, then back upward. ‘The lean of the wall is unfortunate, but acceptable. We can climb.’ He raised the servo-arm and burned another ledge into the wall.
It took ten minutes for Abathar to cut a ladder all the way to the top. Once inside the tunnel, Thane found the path hewing much more closely to the desired heading. Warfist strode at his side. Though he wore his helm, Thane could sense the Space Wolf’s impatience for battle in the quick jerks of his movements. He was holding himself back, though, and Thane noticed him checking on the movements of the rest of the squad, especially Abathar, weighed down by the cumbersome teleport homer. Given the history of tension between the Dark Angels and the Space Wolves, Thane was pleased to see this automatic gesture on the part of Warfist. It made the black of the Space Marines’ armour more than a gesture. They were functioning as a team.
The creation of the Deathwatch livery had struck a resonant chord in Thane’s soul. He had seen an echo of the formation of the Last Wall. But that had been the coming together of Chapters who were all sons of Dorn. The Deathwatch was something else again. He did not know if it was more profound, or more meaningful. He did not try to guess at its consequences, though he knew they would be real, and far-reaching. He had pondered whether he too would change the colour of his armour. He had decided against it. He was part of the Last Wall, and its continued existence was necessary. It was about more than victory. It was about rebuilding.
The Deathwatch, he thought, was both simpler and more complex. It was the forging together of forces so disparate, in some cases so alien to each other, that loyalty to the Emperor was the only common bond. It did not exist to build, Thane thought. Not in the same sense as the Last Wall. But as he travelled the darkness of the attack moon, the colours of his own armour almost as shadowy here as the black of his squad, he was part of the Deathwatch blade. We do not stand guard, he thought. We are not the sentinels on the rampart.
We watch only to find the moment to strike. We are destruction.
They reached an intersection. The tunnel split into five paths. Thane stopped and consulted the auspex. The energy reading was to the left of their position, and two of the paths looked promising. All had cables running down them.
Since disembarking from the Penitent Wrath, Thane had heard the heartbeat of the attack moon. It was as deep and hard as a continent, irregular in its rhythm yet colossal in its strength. It had grown much louder since they left the crevice, booming now down all the tunnels. Dust shook from the roof of the passageway. There were other sounds too — a clamour of bestial snarling, the clangs of heavy blows, the high-pitched squeals of the vermin-like creatures that swarmed in menial servility around the feet of the orks.