Editing Venerable Gavroche, the Stealthnought

Battlebrother Hiawatha, Marine of the Emperor's Nightmare and Watcher of the Third Company Secundus, glanced up from his scope. He did not have the acute senses of his Sleepless brothers, but something in the air seemed-- ah. More rain.

The rainy season had started within days of the Company's deployment. By now, even Hiawatha, who hailed from the deepest recesses of Icelus and had had little experience with water falling from the skies, had learned the telltale signs that foretold a renewed deluge. All of them welcomed the rain, which was so heavy as to distort even their finely calibrated auspices, and served to hide their creeping advance even further. Thankfully the camouflage Techmarine Angast had carefully applied after comparing the local fauna to the examples set down in the chapter's great book of patterns made no signs of being washed off.

Hiawatha adjusted the scope on his Stalker pattern bolter and brought it back up to his helmet. Down in the valley below him the flaring bonfires that lit the Ork encampment sputtered in the rain, but refused to go out without a fight. In their flickering light the greenskins seemed even more monstrous and feral, and despite his iron discipline, Hiawatha's trigger finger ached for a quick release of bolter shells. Surely he could take down some of the bigger Orks from this vantage point and be gone before they realized-- no, that would not do. His brothers had entrusted him with the task of reconnaissance for their insertion and were standing by patiently, waiting for his signal, and even a single shot from a hidden sniper would send the camp into frenzied activity that would make their work that much more difficult. No, better to leave the greenskins squabbling in the mud. Was it not the most venerable Arch-Dreamer, the great Randolphus himself who had decreed 'See, but don't Be Seen'?

For the next several days, Hiawatha remained in his position, relying on his scope and the autosenses of his MK VI Corvus Pattern power armor to gather information on the Orks below. A lesser man would have fallen asleep before long and even a Space Marine would have found it taxing, but Hiawatha was a Nightmare, and his last Rest had spanned the two months before this deployment. The apothecarium had estimated it unlikely that he should find sleep before another three weeks had passed, and their estimates were guided by centuries of experience and the necessity of identifying the Sleepless before madness could take them. Despite his utter dedication as a Marine, Hiawatha looked forward to Resting. Any chapter could fight the alien and the heretic with bolter fire and chainsword strikes, but only the Nightmare had the opportunity to face the enemies of Mankind even in the Empyrean dreamscapes, under the guiding light of the Emperor's dreaming presence. There, will and action were one -- the most fundamental secret of Fluidity.

When the Orks made efforts to decamp, Hiawatha realized that the time to strike had come. He activated the ciphered transmission beacon Angast had given him at the outset, thus calling for his brothers to begin, and brought his Stalker boltgun up. to open fire. Then a snapping twig nearby caught Hiawatha's senses, made him whirl about, and then gasp.

Striding past him in eerie silence was the Venerable Brother Gavroche, a former captain of the company that had given his body in service to the Emperor and was granted a new one as the pilot of one of the chapter's dreadnoughts. But rather than provide fire support for Battlegroup Primus and wear the proud livery of the Dawn, he insisted on fielding with his erstwhile brothers and kept the muted purples of the Dusk. It was virtually unheard of for dreadnoughts to accompany a deployment of Battlegroup Secundus on a mission of stealth and subterfuge, but through the genius of the chapter's techmarines and Gavroche's own expertise in concealment and camouflage, his exploits were spoken of with the same awe as those of the August Dreamwalkers In Iron, despite being neither a Dreamwalker himself, nor one of the sleepless Waking Dead.

As the dreadnought strode onwards toward the fight, bedecked in stummers and carefully applied camouflage and netting, he seemed to Hiawatha like a tree come to life. At the edge of the forest, the former captain broke into a run, and if the sight of a towering, beclawed treant was not enough to send the greenskins into hopeless confusion, the utter silence with which he set upon them did.

Hiawatha brought up his scope. Through it, he saw the telltale flashes of Veteran Brothers Thelen, Haas and Priesterath, teleporting their Terminator squad into the midst of the encampment, while all around them the hidden Watchers of the Third Company unleashed their silent sniper fire. He joined his brothers, rejoicing in the death of every vile xenos that entered his crosshair. Before long, the valley was cleansed of the greenskin taint, and the apothecaries called in flamethrowers to help deal with the alien spores that infested the area.

By the time Hiawatha found Rest, the deployment had entered the stage where Dusk gave way to Dawn -- where Secundus fell back and the companies of Battlegroup Primus descended upon the enemy upon wings of flame, heralded by orbital barrages. A glorious sight to behold, he told himself, but it was the image of Venerable Gavroche, stamping out Orks in utter silence, that stayed with him as he closed his eyes.