Memories flooded up as Rant drifted into half-sleep, unwittingly summoned by his interrupted discussion with the Destroyer. Memories of death, of terror, of the overwhelming sense of futility in the face of certain death.
Memories of Morel's Reach.
It had been just one year prior to the Third War for Armageddon when Hive Fleet Leviathan had encroached upon the galaxy. Like Behemoth and Kraken before it, Leviathan struck like a knife into the frontier worlds below the galaxy's southern edge. It advanced as two main tendrils, the jaws of an all-devouring monster threatening to swallow the galaxy, and the Imperium was unprepared for its impact.
Though one of the jaws was stopped at Tarsis Ultra, the other continued to push on, and where Leviathan passed, worlds and systems were stripped of life to empower the tyranid machine.
Morel's Reach was once a thriving shrine world, a bastion of faith in the face of ultimate terror, but only a charred rock remains to mark its existence. It was just one of many worlds whose passing galvanised Inquisitor Kryptmann and forced his infamous Gambit to sacrifice worlds and deny the tyranids what they sought.
Men and women from countless thousands of light years around died on Morel's Reach, the call to defend the shrine world too much to ignore. Planet Tsuikelyon, bordering distant Ultramar, sacrificed three entire regiments just to make the most feeble of cuts in the tyranid swarm. Sons and daughters of Valmard and Indeli died together with the brothers of the Deathwatch in the bloodiest fighting of Rant's life.
By comparison, Armageddon was meaningless.
Rant's mission, under Captain Zajdel, was to eliminate a Dominatrix; among the largest tyranid beasts capable of planetfall, the monstrosity matched an Emperor Titan for size and provided a link to the hive mind for billions of tyranids. By all rights such a creature should be unable to support its own mass, but nonetheless it seemed almost capable of defying the laws of nature itself. Entire armies were as nothing before it, and under its command, a near-infinite swarm of smaller tyranids ravaged and devoured everything in its path. It radiated terror from every orifice and to look upon it was to consign one's own self to oblivion.
It would not be enough to simply direct an artillery barrage at it, or attack it from orbit. Somebody had to see the beast die, and ensure that the psychic control it held over its smaller kin was broken, disrupted for long enough for an Exterminatus war fleet to attack Morel's Reach unimpeded by the tyranids. If the exterminators moved too soon, the weapons they carried would be intercepted by tyranids on the ground and in the air, and the ships would be vulnerable to the space-faring hive beasts in low orbit.
It had fallen to Captain Zajdel and Sergeant Rant of the Deathwatch, and the rest of their ten-strong kill team, to destroy the Dominatrix.
And they had succeeded, but at what cost?
Rant endeavoured to push the memories from his mind, but they would not be pushed aside so casually and, as they had done for years, they haunted Rant in his half-sleep, inflicting the most vivid waking nightmares upon him as he struggled to keep his focus.
The years had not been kind to Rant at all.
In the aftermath of the Thirteenth Black Crusade, Rant sought out an Iron-Father from his Chapter and asked him how to banish the horrors that haunted his nightmares. Though the venerable machine-priest meant well, he assumed that Rant had been with his brothers battling the Despoiler's legions. In truth, Rant had not enjoyed proper contact with his Chapter for six years by that time, and the advice of the Iron-Father was, at best, incompatible with the terror Rant had faced. Though mind-cleansing practices are common among Space Marines in contact with the Great Enemy, Rant had battled foes and far more insidious, and yet could not afford to lose his memories and unlearn everything he had been taught.
The years since Morel's Reach dragged on and, at times, the horror of it simply became just another event in history, but focusing on it, whether willingly or unwillingly, plunged Rant headfirst into the horror once again.
And the only escape was through battle. The Deathwatch would not wish to re-educate a mind-cleansed Iron Hand, and at any rate Rant would cease to be Rant. The loss of such a proficient Deathwatch veteran would only create more problems.
Thus, for Rant, there was only the present, the current mission, the focus on living past the next assignment. Dwelling on the past would only bring pain, and the horrors would never cease.
