Mark of the Xenos (2011), p112 — Plaguebearer

Report from Watch Captain Brand

Brother Librarian,
When you asked me to share anything I knew about the enemies we regularly confront in the Reach, one incident in particular came to mind. I led a Kill-team on a mission for Inquisitor Quist, the details of which I am not at liberty to discuss. The course of our mission took us to an orbital station above a world in the Acheros Salient - we found the station to be dead in space, with only silence answering our vox-hails. My Battle-Brothers and I scoured the station starting from the uppermost decks, but we found nothing... only empty cells and eerily quiet corridors. In the lower decks our auto-senses registered movement, and my Kill-team's Apothecary warned us of rapidly increasing toxin levels. We discovered the crew of the station jammed into a relatively small chamber, their bodies bloated with pestilence, all having been slain by a particularly virulent virus. Not long after this discovery, we faced a group of daemons, each with a single rheumy eye and a black, twisted horn. These daemons were extremely difficult to destroy, and massed bolter fire was needed to take them down one by one, with the last falling to a blow from my powerfist... although it nearly seemed as if more than one swing would be necessary, for these daemons are seemingly immune to any pain or discomfort, even from missing limbs or wounds that would otherwise despatch an enemy. Eventually, we purged the station by opening that chamber to vacuum, then re-sealing it and cleansing each room with flamers.