Deathwing (Short Story)
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This article is about the the short story by Bryan Ansell and William King. For other uses of Deathwing, see Deathwing (disambiguation). |
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| Author | Bryan Ansell and William King |
| Publisher | Black Library |
| Released | 1990 |
| Collected in | Deathwing (Anthology) The Book of the Lion (Anthology) |
Deathwing is a short story by Bryan Ansell and William King. It was the first published story in the anthology of the same name, first published in 1990, making it one of the earliest short stories published in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It was re-published in the 2001 re-release of Deathwing, as well as in The Book of the Lion (Anthology).[1]
Contents
Cover Description
Dark Angels Sergeant Ezekiel returns to his home world to recruit new battle-brothers for the Chapter, but finds his people dead and their villages burned. Discovering an insidious alien threat behind the destruction, Ezekiel reclaims his birth-name of Cloud Runner and undergoes the Rite of the Deathwing, beginning a crusade that will leave a mark on the history of the Dark Angels Chapter.[1]
Synopsis
Two centuries after he joined the Dark Angels, Cloud Runner and his fellow Deathwing Marines arrive at his former village only to find it a deserted ruin. They soon discover a vast industrial city on a nearby plain. Librarian Two Heads Talking enters the city after assuming a psychic disguise. There he finds the descendants of the Plains people have been reduced to a servile and downtrodden mass of factory workers slaving away for their overlords.
Meanwhile Cloud Runner and the other Marines visit each of their home villages and find they have all been devastated by unknown assailants. Finally they behold a wall painting of a genestealer and realise the cause of their homeworld's ruin. Cloud Runner holds a gathering allowing each warrior to voice his opinion on what to do next. He opens with his own tale of how, as a young buck, he visited the forbidden Ghost Mountain with a rival youth and expected to die when "Deathwing" appeared in the sky. Instead the Thunderhawk landed before him and disgorged Dark Angel warriors, one of them his ancestor Hawk Talon. Cloud Runner chose to leave behind his bride-to-be Running Deer and follow in Hawk Talon's footsteps.
Lame Bear then speaks of a time when they visited the hive world of Thranx after that planet's tithes fell into arrears for two decades. The Dark Angels accompanied the expedition's Inquisitor to meet with the unctuous planetary governor, who blamed warp storms and offered tribute. Two Heads Talking exposed the presence of genestealers in the caskets and the governor as a Magus, and the Dark Angels had to fight their way off-world through the planet's entire population, after which Tranx had to be virus-bombed. It transpired that only three generations were required for a single genestealer to corrupt the whole world.
Bloody Moon relates an incident aboard a space hulk when his unit battled Chaos Space Marines. Wondering at how they could have followed Horus against the Emperor, he reflects upon how moral corruption occurs in small, easily excused steps.
In the city Two Heads Talking comes across Morning Star, an elderly man being beaten by the regime's thugs. After the thugs are driven off and the Librarian's disguise falls away, the old man (a descendant of Running Deer and Cloud Runner's old rival) relates to Two Heads Talking of how their world was corrupted. After a derelict spacecraft crashed fifty years ago, its pale and weak denizens attempted to convert the proud warrior tribes of the Plains to their worship of the Four-Armed Emperor. When missionary efforts failed, they allied with the degenerate Hill Clans and with purestrain genestealers annihilated the Plains warriors and corralled the people into the city.
A Magus arrives with genestealers. Morning Star and the genestealers are killed, then Two Heads Talking slays the Magus before running but shortly after is overpowered and brought before the Genestealer Patriarch. During a psychic communion Two Heads Talking learns that the Patriarch previously escaped Thranx, then manages to slay the Patriarch at the cost of his own life.
Cloud Runner and the Deathwing Terminators decide to purge their world and save what they can of its people. Painting the black Terminator suits bone-white as part of a death ritual, they then proceed to exterminate the entire genestealer cult, though only six of the twenty-nine Marines survive. Cloud Runner and the remaining Marines divide the uncorrupted city denizens into tribes and go their separate ways, hoping to rebuild the old warrior culture of the Plains so that their homeworld might one day furnish Dark Angel recruits again.
Years later a delegation from the Chapter arrives, following up the absence of their Deathwing Terminators. Cloud Runner explains to Hawk Talon (now a Dreadnought) and his former subordinate what has happened, then remands the Terminator suits to the Chapter. His request that the suits remain painted white in memory of the fallen warriors is granted. Cloud Runner then declines Hawk Talon's suggestion that he rejoins the Chapter and bids him farewell.
See also
Sources
- 1: Black Library - Deathwing (Short Story) (last visited 06 June 2023)
