The greatest victories in history are last stands, so fight each battle as if there is no retreat—nowhere to run back to.
Sergeant Tamor looked up at the shrine assembled by the priests stationed aboard the ship. They moved among the remaining crew, dispensing the Emperor's blessings and administering the final sacrament.
The bones held within the reliquary stared ahead, blank and unjudging. There was no expression there—no condemnation, no promise, and to Tamor, no dread in what they represented. They were the bones of an unnamed hero. One who had died defending humanity and been forgotten by time.
They reminded all who fought beneath them that their time, too, would come—and that even the mightiest of heroes could be lost to history. Yet in that same truth, they carried a different meaning: that they did not fight for glory, nor to be remembered among the stars. They fought so that one day there would be no need to raise bones above a battlefield. So that one day, there would be no need for heroes at all.
He could hear heroes being made throughout the ship.
His gene-enhanced hearing had caught the sounds hours ago—the distant thunder of weapons fire, the screams cut short, the impacts of detonations echoing through decks and bulkheads. He had heard them all.
He knew the plan.
He had made the plan.
He had ordered the crew to withdraw from their defensive positions in the hangar and reassigned them to fallback lines—positions where many had died, and where many more had been lost with their backs to the enemy. It was a shameful death. One no warrior wished to face.
They had not wanted to accept the order. Many had not. They had sold their lives dearly in defiance—defiance of him, and defiance of the xenos.
And if his plan failed—if the plan that followed it failed—and if the Chaplain's final defense did not succeed, then they would be forgotten. Their bones would never be raised over a battlefield to remind the living why they fought.
They would simply have died, buying the world below a few more hours free of xenos slavery.
He had prayed.
To his gene-father, and to his father's father. With the faintest, most desperate hope that in this darkest hour, a miracle might appear. A fleet lost in the warp, emerging at the last moment to sweep the invaders aside. Or some other miracle—equally impossible and beyond his imagining—might yet save them.
He knew better.
Reports placed the number of Tau aboard the ship in the low hundreds. Yet they held the advantage. The voidsmen were trained. They had the will to fight. But they were forced to defend everywhere at once, while the Tau struck precisely where they chose.
Those damned battlesuits did the rest.
Every trapped or bypassed pocket of resistance was silenced by a single battlesuit arriving like a god of war. Of the thousand crew now gathered near the throne, those machines were responsible for hundreds of deaths.
If there was anything that placed those upstart xenos on the same level as the Emperor's finest, it was their battlesuits.
Throughout Imperial history, every advantage humanity had forged had been answered by Tau innovation. For every strength, they built a counter. Tamor had even heard rumors—whispers—that the Tau possessed a battlesuit designed to challenge Titans themselves.
He shook the defeatist thoughts from his mind.
They did not matter.
He had planned for this. That was why he had conserved his strength and drawn the enemy here—onto the gunnery deck. The widest open space on the entire ship.
This was no maze of corridors and compartments.
This was an open field.
A killing field.
Flanked on either side by the ship's main cannons, the deck offered clear lines of fire. Here, the crew and his Marines could cut the Tau down as they entered. And if they survived the initial storm, they would be gunned down as they struggled to gain ground.
A sudden surge of activity rippled across the deck.
Tamor looked up as the breeches of the four massive cannons sealed shut, their loading arms retracting into their housings. Four heavy click-thunks echoed across the deck, followed by the grinding roar of metal as the guns were drawn into their firing positions.
On countless Imperial and Astartes vessels, thousands of ratings were required to haul and reload such weapons. That had once been true here as well—until the campaign on Forge World Declian Epsilon. The Mechanicus had installed full autoloader systems, easing manpower demands.
It had saved the ship then.
Now it had left her undermanned.
A vessel that should have carried twelve thousand souls now bore fewer than six thousand. Of those, only a few hundred were armsmen.
A prayer rang out over the deck's speakers.
"Blessed Emperor, guide our shot.
May it fly true into the heart of Your enemies.
Father Sanguinius, give it wings—
and may it pierce their hulls as Your spear pierced the traitor's flesh."
The cannons fired in sequence, slamming back against their mounts. The deck shuddered. The reload cycle began anew as a shell rose from below, icons carved reverently into its casing.
The ship lay directly in the path of the Tau advance. Her engines were crippled, but she could still maneuver—and as long as this deck held, she could fire volley after volley into transports and warships alike.
Eventually, the enemy fleet would tear her apart.
But until then, she would buy time.
Across the planet and throughout the system, astropaths screamed the plea for aid into the warp. Every second Tamor and his Marines held here was another heartbeat closer to salvation.
His Marines were watching him.
Waiting.
He had been lost in thought too long.
Corradin Salia stood nearest—his brother since their days as aspirants. They had survived the trials together. When Tamor had returned from the Deathwatch bearing a sergeant's rank, it had been Corradin who first embraced him and placed his trust in Tamor before the squad.
Luchinus Kanel was a veteran in all but title. If his deeds reached the flagship, he would be honored as such. If he returned in person, he would qualify for Deathwatch service himself.
Artryan Dumico stood with his eyes closed—not in prayer, but in communion with the warp. His ancient Terminator armor marked him as a relic of the Great Crusade. His companions, Sirius Dandro and Serves Joro, flanked him in silence—nearly identical, brothers in blood as well as in war.
Leon Danro paced restlessly, glancing toward the bulkhead as though sheer will might draw the enemy closer. He bore such a resemblance to their gene-father that the priesthood had tried repeatedly to recruit him. Perhaps that was why he kept his blond hair cropped short in the Roman style.
Astoraen Ishtar checked his equipment again and again—a nervous habit he had carried since before his induction. He wore no robes, only simple white armor.
Luceon Morar moved among the crew, offering words of comfort. Not promises of survival—but reassurance that their deaths would matter. He read from the Uplifting Primer at request and led prayers where he could.
Tamor drew a deep breath.
"Brothers," he said. "Gather."
They formed a circle around him. He met each of their gazes in turn. They knew what this was. The ship was too small. They were too few.
Hopeless, perhaps.
Even pointless.
"I will not tell you this is our Infinity Gate," he said. "Nor that we will be remembered when liberation comes—if it ever does. This battle, this world, may never even be named."
"But if there is one thing we can do—" his voice hardened, "—we will burn this day into the xenos' memory. They will remember us for as long as they live. They will teach their children to fear us. And one day, our brothers and cousins will surge forth and scour this blight from the galaxy."
He saw it in their eyes.
Not frenzy.
Acceptance.
Determination.
And beneath it all, the wrath of their father.
The guns fired again.
An armsman approached and halted, waiting.
"Speak," Tamor rumbled.
"M'lord, the final fallback positions have been overrun. Only the rear guards remain. The xenos will reach us shortly."
"Then we make ready," Tamor said. "Thank you, warrant officer."
The man bowed and moved off, shouting orders as he went.
"Choose your positions well, brothers," Tamor said quietly. "Stand tall. Inspire those who die with us."
One by one, they donned their helmets and took their places.
Veteran Sergeant Tamor of the Angels Vigilant watched them go.
"Die well, my brothers," he whispered.
Then he sealed his helm and took his final post.