V3 Chapter 52: Deathmarks and Lychguard
An hour after Markus entered the tomb, they had finally destroyed every enemy in the first wave they had encountered.
Both sides of the corridor were heaped with the wreckage of Necron Warriors, some bodies already vanished in a flash of green, the rest damaged too severely by power weapons, bolter fire, and promethium flame to be recovered quickly. The Novamarines Third Company assault detachment reformed their line, and the Skitarii established a watch perimeter ahead of the Tech-Priests.
Their own dead numbered zero.
Irrecoverable losses were likewise zero.
The Novamarines sergeant in half-blue, half-white power armour finally could not hold back any longer. He picked his way across the wreckage-strewn floor and came to stand before Markus, looking up at the Shadow Wolf who stood nearly a head taller than himself.
"What exactly is this?"
Markus was drawing his power sword out of a still-twitching Necron Warrior. The disruption field along the blade flickered once, and the last trace of green light in the metal body went dark with it.
He looked down at the Novamarine.
"What exactly are you referring to?"
The Novamarine pointed a hand at Markus, then at himself, then out toward his battle-brothers and the Skitarii in the distance. His voice was pitched low, but the confusion in it was impossible to hide.
"What exactly is that power? I've never known anything like it..."
"Brother."
Markus cut him off.
He raised a hand and removed his white helm, meeting the Novamarine's gaze with his own face bared. The green light in the corridor fell across his features, revealing a face carved deeper and harder than that of an ordinary Astartes.
"I believe Lord Guilliman's Crusade Ground Force Unified Combat Awareness and Discipline Protocol has already made clear what's happening right now."
The Novamarine fell silent.
Markus continued. "You can understand it as a miracle, or you can believe this power comes from the Emperor. As for whether it has anything to do with the Warp, that isn't a conclusion for us to reach down here in a tomb."
His voice was steady.
"Your father has acknowledged it. The Inquisition has not called a halt to it. Right now, you are using this power to hold back the enemies of mankind."
Markus looked him in the eye.
"Let it become your blade, not the doubt in your heart."
Before the words had fully left him, Markus snapped his head toward the distance.
His body drove forward in one motion, and the power sword in his hand was hurled toward a corner of the corridor. A narrow green pocket space had just opened there, and a metal figure stepped silently out of it.
The power sword arrived first.
The blade drove straight into the xenos's head, pinning it to the black wall behind it. The disruption field surged, arcs spreading down through the body, and a phase-recall signal flickered several times before failing to complete.
Before Markus's body had fully recovered its stance, two more Synaptic Disintegrator beams had already fired at him from different directions.
Several of the Shadow Wolves of Luna reacted faster.
Two storm shields rose almost simultaneously to block in front of Markus, the green beams striking the energy shields in a blinding flash. The Novamarine sergeant raised his weapon at once, and the battle-brothers around him locked onto both directions in the same instant.
But the xenos there had already withdrawn.
The two green pocket spaces contracted and vanished, and the walls returned to their black mirror surface. Only the metal body pinned to the wall still twitched, the light within its skull rapidly dying out.
Markus stared at the two directions, the near-physical sense of danger from a moment ago still clinging to him.
He remembered what Duvette had told them before the campaign began.
Deathmarks.
That weapon called the Synaptic Disintegrator did not need to punch through a full suit of power armour. If the beam struck true, even a warrior like him, as he stood now, could be killed on the spot.
Markus clapped a hand on the shoulder of the now fully alert Novamarine before him, then put his helm back on.
"Remember that feeling."
With that, he walked slowly to the wall and pulled his power sword free from the Deathmark's wreckage. The body slumped to the ground at once, its shattered head completely dark.
"Keep moving."
Markus ordered.
He signalled the Tech-Priests to spread the servo-skulls out, watching every corner around them. Once a Deathmark accepted a kill order, it would not typically give up easily before its target was dead.
The group continued along the main passage.
The interior of this xenos structure was deeply strange; everyone's sense of space was being disrupted. At times they were clearly walking upward, yet the elevation readings given by the accompanying Tech-Priests showed them descending.
The route maps relayed back by the servo-skulls also began to overlap.
The Tech-Priests confirmed they had not doubled back on their route, and yet the same set of runes, the same stretch of black wall, and the same recessed hall had now appeared ahead of them for the third time. The Novamarines did not complain, and the Shadow Wolves of Luna simply held formation.
During this stretch, only ordinary Necron Warriors and Scarabs harassed them.
Markus never let his guard down.
When they passed through that same tomb hall for the third time, everyone came to a stop.
Not far off, a group of xenos entirely unlike their previous enemies had appeared.
They were taller, their metal frames broader, with something resembling a crown-like ornament behind the head. They carried Warscythes, or hyperphase swords and dispersion shields, standing arrayed in ranks, facing off against the Astartes and the Skitarii.
Behind these xenos stood several massive spider-like mechanical constructs.
The many legs of the Triarch Stalkers bore their heavy bodies, the tool-limbs along their undersides and backs moving slowly. Scarab swarms crawled around them, faint green light flickering back and forth in the gaps between plating.
Those towering xenos did not attack immediately.
They stood silently at the far end of the hall, like a wall of metal blocking the path forward.
After a moment, the tallest and most ornately adorned of the xenos stepped slowly forward from the front rank. He slammed the great shield in his hand down against the ground, and a dull echo rolled through the black hall.
Markus raised his storm shield.
The Novamarines' bolters locked onto the enemy ahead, and the Skitarii trained their weapons on the four Triarch Stalkers as well.
The xenos raised its head and spoke in human High Gothic.
"I am Valgard Kartahmen, Royal Guard Commander of the Sautekh Court."
Its voice was stiff, but clear enough.
"My lord admires your courage and your strength. Withdraw now, and you may yet be spared death."
Kartahmen slowly raised the great shield in his hand.
"Otherwise..."
Markus let out a short laugh.
In the next instant, a storm of bolter shells slammed into the Royal Guard Commander.
Kartahmen raised his dispersion shield, and the first volley of bolter shells detonated against its face. Flame and fragments were deflected aside by the green energy, and the Lychguard phalanx behind him stepped forward as one.
Markus had not waited for him to finish.
"For the Emperor!"
With that roar, the Shadow Wolves of Luna charged into the Lychguard phalanx. The Novamarines Third Company assault detachment followed close behind, promethium flame and bolter fire together lighting up the black hall.
The battle had begun in earnest.