The Unforgiven - Gav Thorpe

by Warhammer 40K

  He was no hero.

  Telemenus realised his eyes were closed. At least, he felt they were closed and opened them. What greeted him was a complex vision akin to the telemetry display of his old Terminator armour. He could feel other senses – audio pick-ups, pressure gauges, kinaesthetic attitude relays – and somehow knew that he was standing.

  He looked left and heard a whine of servos. He was greeted by the smiling faces of Temraen and Adrophius. Belial was with them, stern but not scowling for a change.

  They seemed short. Smaller than Telemenus remembered. He assumed that he had been mounted in a high position on a wall or perhaps hanging from the ceiling.

  Other sensations disproved this belief. He could feel limbs, just as clearly as he had felt them during the Emperor’s caress. He felt strong. He felt whole.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ asked Temraen.

  ‘I can,’ Telemenus replied. He was shocked by the volume of his voice, thundering from an external address amplifier.

  ‘We will have to perform more specific audio and ocular tests, but for now confirm that you can also see us,’ said Adrophius.

  With a thought, Telemenus zoomed in on the Techmarine’s face. He could see the pores, the beads of sweat, tiny scars and abrasions from sparks let loose by forgework. His view flickered through several different spectral scopes and settled on x-ray. Adrophius’s left arm was extensively rebuilt with bionic parts and there was a sheath cladding the upper part of his spine.

  ‘I can see very well.’ Telemenus enjoyed the rolling boom of his new voice. ‘What has become of me? What will my duties be?’

  Belial stepped forward, looking up at Telemenus.

  ‘You will continue to fight for the Chapter.’

  Telemenus noticed the shadow he cast across the floor of the armourium. It swathed Belial in his Terminator armour. Blocky, at least four metres tall, almost as wide. His chemical sensor picked up the taint of exhaust on the air. He had no arms, not as a man might. On his right shoulder was a weapon with two long barrels. A twin-linked lascannon. The left mount sported a chamfered, armoured box which he now recognised as a multiple missile launcher.

  ‘A Dreadnought?’ he said, incredulous. ‘You have placed me into the armour of a Dreadnought.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Belial. ‘Such shall be your burden, to fight on for the Emperor and the Dark Angels.’

  ‘Why?’ Telemenus asked. ‘You cannot believe me worthy, surely?’

  ‘I can. You earned the marksman’s honour, a remarkable achievement. The Chapter cannot waste such a skill. You have swapped bolter and storm bolter for lascannon and missile launcher, but I expect you to employ them with the same precision. You will support your brothers with these weapons, protecting them with your firepower as these plates of ceramite and adamantium protect the carcass you have become.’

  Belial stepped back, and crossed his arms.

  ‘More than that, you have proven yourself capable of upholding the honour of this armour. There are few with the will to survive the bonding process. Ezekiel vouched for you, after your ordeal at the hands of the daemon. It was your spirit that drove the warp-disease from your body. He said you would prevail and he was correct. Your battle-brothers brought petition unasked-for, so that you might fight with them again on the line. Brother Daellon in particular praised your tactical skills and awareness. He claims that he would not have survived Ulthor without your aid and insight.’

  ‘I…’ Telemenus was lost for words, which he knew must appear somewhat odd for a hulking war machine that could obliterate battle tanks and wipe out whole squads of troops. ‘I will extend my gratitude to them, when I have the opportunity.’

  ‘You will repay their faith with attention to your battle-duties,’ Belial said sternly. ‘You are still a warrior of the Deathwing, but much more than that. They will look up to you, even my Knights whom you have revered as heroes. You must lead by word as well as deed. Fight with honour at their side.’

  ‘I will,’ said Telemenus. It was almost overwhelming, but it would be dishonourable to dwell on such a boon. As Belial had said, the only true way to honour his brothers and Chapter was in battle. After such misgivings over what fate held for him, the thought that he would again walk the field of battle with his brothers brought a surge of happiness. He tempered it quickly, knowing that not only was he now a powerful engine of war, but also a figurehead that others would follow. He had become an embodiment of the Lion’s will and the strength of Caliban. ‘I will honour this armour with my oaths. I shall be the fist that breaks armies, whose blows topple fortresses. More machine than man, perhaps, but always a battle-brother.’

  ‘Good. There is still much that must be done before you are battle-ready, and I believe that we do not have long to prepare. I will leave you for now, but will return soon.’

  Belial strode away, leaving Telemenus to ponder what this meant. Daellon and the others had spoken of fabled Caliban, but Telemenus had no idea how long he had remained in suspended animation. It could have been days or years. He would need to learn what he had missed.

  His thoughts turned to the Emperor, who had been his guide and shield throughout the whole ordeal since his wounding. He wondered whether his internment into the Dreadnought sarcophagus signalled the end of the intervention of the Master of Mankind.

  He need not have worried. Where Belial had been moments before, the shadow of a great two-headed eagle stretched across the ground.

  ‘I will never leave you,’ the Emperor told him.

  An Enemy Revealed

  Carried through the void by arcane engines, the Rock powered towards the zone of space that the metriculation systems claimed had once been the orbit of Caliban. The attendant fleets of the Dark Angels, Knights of the Crimson Order and the Consecrators spread out across several hundred thousand kilometres from the bastion of the Unforgiven. Eleven battle-barges, eighteen strike cruisers and more than three dozen rapid strike vessels, fast patrol destroyers, torpedo corvettes and other escort-class warships created a sphere of guns around the remnants of the Lion’s home world.

  As they advanced, the Terminus Est and the rest of Typhus’s plaguefleet withdrew, maintaining a separation of at least five hundred thousand kilometres. It was clear that the traitor commander had no intention of leaving the system unless he was forced, but for the moment Azrael was content to secure the orbit of Caliban and plan his next move.

  Over ten thousand years the asteroid remains of ancient Caliban had spread along the planet’s former orbit, creating a dense field containing tens of thousands of pieces of planetary debris and a cloud of dust and gas that extended for several thousand kilometres further.

  While the other ships maintained their cordon at a distance, the Rock ploughed into these crumbling remains, its navigational field flaring as it shunted aside the ancient planetary matter. Larger pieces of celestial debris still held haunting reminders that the swirling rocks had once been an inhabited world. Though pocked and cratered and cracked by impacts and collisions, after ten thousand years the void had not erased the towers and battlements of ancient fortresses. The tumbled ruins of arcologies kilometres-tall spun as moons around the splintered remains of their foundations. Bridges, roads, viaducts, canals, aqueducts and rivers still etched their lines across floating chunks of debris five kilometres across, like scratch-marked runestones of the gods.

  The artificial gravity field powered from the innards of the massive fortress-monastery attracted the smaller asteroids. To avoid the nav-shields overloading from so many impacts, the aegis field was set to allow these through, whereupon they were blasted into atoms by point-defence turrets built to defend against gunships and landing craft – weapons that to this day, as far as Azrael knew from his readings, had not fired in anger for ten thousand years. Even so, by the time the Rock had pushed into the heart of the stellar field it was orbited by several dozen satellites r
anging from fist-sized to a few metres across.

  In a blaze of lasers and tracer bullets, thrusters letting out plumes of white fire, the fortress-monastery of the Dark Angels came to a slow stop.

  ‘Positional nominal null point established, Lord Azrael.’ The Master of the Forge’s voice blared from the command spire’s speakers with a mechanical rattle. ‘System orbital dominance established.’

  Unlike the bridges of the starships around it, the Rock’s central strategium needed no servitors to monitor the metriculation systems. In the first instance, everything was coordinated through the semi-cyberised mind of the Master of the Forge. A few Space Marines oversaw the offensive and defensive systems, aided by a small company of Chapter-serfs, while other unaugmented human auxiliaries attended to communications and scanner stations.

  The spire was not quite at the pinnacle of what had once been the Tower of Aldurukh. The very summit of the edifice was a broken mess of toppled towers, blocked corridors and collapsed halls – a scar from the Age of Heresy left in place as a mark of honour to the fortress. Rumours abounded through the lower ranks of what might lurk in those lofty turrets and galleries. As he had risen to the position of Supreme Grand Master Azrael had slowly learned that there were far greater and more disturbing mysteries than the ghost stories of pre-transformation novitiates and Tenth Company Scouts.

  Huge windows, each ten metres high, surrounded the octagonal command deck at the heart of the chamber. Massive columns held up the great vaults of the ceiling, each keystone forming the mount for a lantern as tall as Azrael, filling the space with a pale blue light. From his position atop a stepped dais at the centre of the strategium the Supreme Grand Master could see up into the void of space and out across the barren expanse of the Rock.

  The fortress-monastery extended several kilometres from the Tower of Angels, incorporating the three central curtain walls of old Aldurukh. Like the other remnants of Caliban that now filled the view, the Rock was dotted with reminders of the ancient civilisation that had given rise to the Order and later sustained the Dark Angels.

  Dormant gun towers and empty barracks blocks, outer defensive works, docks and ports, all had survived the great upheaval of the world, protected by the mighty Gorgon’s Aegis – the powerful energy shield that had sheathed Aldurukh and its foundation during the cataclysmic battle between the Lion’s followers and the Fallen.

  Azrael could not help but turn towards the pinnacle of the tower and look upon the collapsed roofs and broken walls of the summit. There the Lion had battled Luther while war raged in orbit and on the surface of Caliban. How that confrontation had ended, not even Luther would say except to insist that the Lion still lived on, his shade haunting the Rock.

  Azrael considered his last audience with the Dark Oracle.

  The last Grand Master of the Order was calm, sat on his bench facing Azrael on his stool outside the cell. The Supreme Grand Master was not lulled into any confidence by the apparently cogent expression of his prisoner – there had been many times Luther’s sedate exterior had broken in moments to reveal the madness within.

  ‘It is coming quickly, the death of a world, the end of hope,’ the Dark Oracle said quietly, leaning forward with his arms on his knees. His eyes were fixed on Azrael. ‘The vultures gather, each hoping to pluck a morsel from the corpse.’

  ‘Whose corpse?’

  ‘Fair Caliban’s corpse, of course. We are but mites on her beautiful skin. A dermal infection. A parasite. We offended her, delving deep wounds into her flesh to fill with our nests. We thought to gouge her secrets from her and she turned on her children.’

  ‘You destroyed Caliban, with your treachery,’ Azrael snapped. Circumstances allowed him no patience at this time. ‘What of Typhus? Why has he come?’

  Luther was surprised by this question, sitting up with a frown.

  ‘Calas Typhon, the seedbringer, the plough and the harvest. The circle of fecundity. He comes for me, but I am already here. Thrice-cursed, thrice-cursed, thrice-cursed. Why always thrice, dear Azrael? And now a new triumvirate of scavengers, picking over the devastation to see what prizes they can find.’

  Azrael stood up to leave but Luther stood up also, eyes imploring.

  ‘Let Caliban die…’ he whispered. ‘Leave her in peace.’

  It had not gone well from there, leaving Luther a raving mess and Azrael none the wiser about Cypher or Typhus’s plans. All that he had been able to gather from the madman’s ranting was that Caliban was about to fall, just as he had said before. Looking at the broken pieces of the planet around him, the Supreme Grand Master knew that it was a warning ten thousand years too late.

  A clarion rang out across the command tower, turning all eyes towards the main doors. The huge double portal wheezed open to reveal a striking figure clad in black war-plate and a long white cloak. He wore his helm, crested front to back with a red brush. The sigils on his shoulder pads were almost completely obscured by a plethora of purity seals made from crimson wax and streamers of script-covered parchment. More of the seals fluttered from his greaves as he strode into the command hall.

  His armour was a mix of archaic marks from the time of the Imperium’s founding and the Horus Heresy – pieces of Mark Three and Mark Four combined, studded with bonding rivets across the chest. A knightly helm taken from a suit of ancient Crusade Armour – officially designated Mark Two – completed the battleplate. What should have been a strange ad-hoc mix had been rendered into a beautiful suit of wargear by the artificers of his Chapter. The black enamel shone like oil, the gold that edged his breastplate and gilded the rivets sparkled in the lamps of the command tower.

  Behind him came five Terminators, as black-clad as their lord save for helms of off-white to symbolise brotherhood with the Deathwing. Like their commander, their armour was a mix of styles and types, gathered from armouries and forgotten Legiones Astartes depots scattered across the galaxy. They bore with them the Chapter standard of the Consecrators, and several other artefacts from their hidden fortress-monastery known as the Reliquaria – chalices, sceptres and a bronze-sheathed staff topped with a winged blade.

  ‘Grand Master Nakir,’ Azrael called down to the new arrival. ‘I bid you welcome to the Tower of Angels.’

  With some unheard command, Nakir ordered his honour guard to remain where they were. He ascended the steps swiftly, and it was only when he reached the command platform that Azrael realised how tall the Chapter Master was. He had twenty centimetres on Azrael, a difference that felt even greater with the swaying crest on his helm.

  Nakir drew his sword and lowered to one knee. Taking the blade in both hands, he wordlessly offered it up to Azrael. The Supreme Grand Master examined the weapon keenly. It was of superb craftsmanship, and with surprise Azrael recognised the black material of the blade. It was the same as the weapons wielded by himself and Belial – the Sword of Secrets and the Sword of Silence.

  ‘A Heavenfall blade?’ said Azrael. Nakir stood and offered the hilt of his weapon. The Supreme Grand Master took it, the grip feeling comfortable in his fist, the weight as balanced as his own blade. ‘Incredible. Where did it come from?’

  ‘It was gifted to Grand Master Orias, first lord of the Disciples of Caliban.’ The Consecrator’s voice was quiet and gravelly, almost a growl. ‘He fell in battle against the orks of the Quolon Pass. I recovered it three decades ago.’

  ‘I have read of this weapon. The Sword of Sanctity.’

  ‘I would return it to its proper master.’

  ‘It has found its proper master,’ said Azrael. He handed back the sword. ‘It is not only yours by right of recovery, but you would bring honour to the cousin of my own blade.’

  Nakir took the weapon and sheathed it with a nod. He glanced around the command tower and then reached up to remove his helm. It came free with a hiss of escaping air. Nakir’s face was surprisingly young, gaunt to the point of s
keletal. His eyes were a piercing blue, at odds with the mop of black hair on his scalp. His brow was tattooed with an Imperial aquila in black, and a broken blade in red adorned each of his cheeks. There was a scar across the front and right side of his throat and evidence of an implant – the wound that gave him his distinctive voice.

  ‘I have longed to set foot in the Tower of Angels for my whole life,’ Nakir said, looking around again, this time drinking in his surroundings, eyes wide with awe. It was a strange contrast to the severe figure he cut when wearing his helmet. He returned his gaze to Azrael and his expression hardened. ‘A silver lining to the storm that brings me here.’

  Nakir had been an Interrogator-Chaplain before his ascension to command of the Consecrators, the so-called Master of Souls. Even now a symbol of his past hung at his waist, a wooden rod in the shape of a small crozius arcanum, studded with six black pearls. Each was a trophy of a Fallen made to repent, a remarkable feat for any Dark Angel, and almost unprecedented in one of Nakir’s short service. He led a Chapter dedicated to unearthing the secrets of the past. A penetrating stare threatened to strip away the layers of deceit in which Azrael was forced to wrap himself. He had dealt with the likes of Asmodai and Sapphon for decades, but felt himself being opened up by the Master of Souls.

  ‘A dire time, but you have my utmost gratitude for your presence,’ he said to move the conversation in a different direction. ‘I must admit that it was a surprise, particularly to find out that you personally led the force.’

  ‘When the Chief Librarian of the Dark Angels issues a rallying call on behalf of the Supreme Grand Master, it penetrates even the sepulchre of the Reliquaria. That the muster was to be at Caliban added even greater weight to the missive.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The Caliban System was technically protected territory of the Dark Angels, forbidden to enter without invitation even for the Successors. However, Azrael knew that there had been occasions when the Consecrators had sent missions into the remnants of the Legion home world in their quest for the ancient heirlooms of the Lion. Nakir probably knew more about those times than even Ezekiel. Azrael considered whether it would be profitable to see if Nakir knew anything about the existence of Tuchulcha, but dismissed the idea. It was too dangerous to invite any inquiry in that direction.