[Narrative] The Great Lie, II – Wulfruna

Wulfruna. 6311991.M41

"I had it, Mithrac! I had it within my reach..."

Kaine - Captain Kaine, Seventh Company, now - wheezed his curses from a ventilator. Swathes had been torn from his torso, and what wasn't gone entirely was marked by arcing lightning burns. The Necrons' firepower had driven him to his knees, and Cathartes - Codicier Cathartes, now, of necessity to maintain the great lie - considered it good fortune that he was still able to breathe at all. The Librarian rested his hands on the ventilator frame, let a little of his biomantic power flow. Kaine was stable, but he was suffering, and Cathartes could do something about that - at least, in physical terms.

"Tell me again what happened," said Mithrac. He'd not descended to the surface alongside them - his lot had been to monitor the engagement from orbit, and all he'd seen had been the shroud spreading through Wulfruna's sky. For his part, he hadn't expected his brothers in secrecy to return at all after that.

"We break cover, pursuing the constructs with the shields. I order every battle-brother with range to fire on them in the hope that they will break. I kill the last one myself. Then the Necron officer - the master xenos - does something to the device it's retrieved. Blackout. The sky turns black. As if a pict-lens had glitched and inverted. As my sight adjusts I realise the Necron phalanx has enclosed us. They open fire. My honour guard take the brunt. I try to press forward. A xeno in robes gestures. Lightning strikes. The next I know, I am aboard the Thunderhawk." A thought seemed to strike Kaine, and he tried to push himself up; the med-servitor blared its alarm and something slipped beneath his exposed ribs. "The Chapter Master?" he asked, through gritted teeth.

"Recovered. The Necrons disassembled his weaponry, but left the sarcophagus intact."

"He cannot know, Mithrac. He cannot be told..."

Cathartes' fingers tightened their grip on the ventilator; gauntlet servos whirred. "You led a demi-company to near destruction within his sight. He put his own life at risk. With respect, brother-captain, I cannot lie to the Chapter forever."

"Then... let me be taken before the Regent. I will give myself to the justice of the living. For this failure."

"You have not failed," said Mithrac. "We have not failed." He tapped his right shoulderpad - black plate, though it bore the livery of the Fifth Company like the others. "I did not serve two decades in the Deathwatch to admit failure. Neither did you accept your ascension to the Council of Captains. We vowed that we would hunt the Necron while we lived. We are all yet living. Our oath endures."

"And yet," said Cathartes, "I see sense in what he wishes. This does not have to be our burden to bear. With the Chapter Master involved - we can change things. We can carry on our hunt with the blessing of the Regent and the Council. Make a Crusade of it. Have this out in the open, at last. Tell me you haven't been preparing for this, Kaine! The Deathwatch tours. Promoting survivors of that first bloodshed. We can go on, with the Chapter's blessing - and keep the secret from the Wolves, still."

As Kaine nodded, and let himself sleep; as Mithrac saluted, and as Cathartes made to contact the Chapter at large, the med-servitor continued its work. Only for the briefest instant would any of them have seen the gold in its single eye - the sheer, shiny perfection of living metal where organic tissue should have been.

Later, a medical servitor would be found aboard, disassembled: metallic components left where they had presumably fallen, organic apparently vapourised, gone into the ether.

Outside Imperial space, and thus outside Imperial time, a star god laughed. The great lie would serve for a while longer, to keep the Hawk Lords in place. The Space Wolves would arrive of their own accord, drawn on a long trail from across the galaxy, eight hundred years in the laying. And when they did, it would be time; time, for once, to tell the truth.

 

Garbutt and I played a short run of games around the dawn of sixth edition, before the darkness of Old Night fell across the universe and the Great Rift rent the sky and we sort of stopped Fortying the Kay for a while. One of these engagements - the Mourning Sun incident - was a charming Relic encounter which established quite the rivalry between Captain Talassar Kaine and his counterpart, the Phaerek Tekeshi...