Each of the two Space Marines was dressed in a blood-red chiton, their arms and legs bare. The same height, with similar builds and profiles, they could have easily been brothers, with Thaddeus's lighter complexion and Aramus's somewhat darker being the only significant difference between them. They were of an age, as well, each in the middle of his fourth decade of life, though with the life-extending benefits of the implants that had transformed them from mortals into superhuman Astartes, neither looked older than the middle of their third decade. And while they were not brothers by blood, merely battle-brothers of the Blood Ravens Chapter, in another sense they were the sons of the same mother - the same mother world at any rate, both native to the planet Meridian, capital of the Aurelia sub-sector.
'Hold,' Aramus said, his hands held up and palm-out towards Thaddeus, just as the latter was readying for another attack. Sweat ran in rivulets down both of their bodies, and even with the all-but-boundless stamina of an Astartes in his prime, both were growing increasingly winded after their long sparring match. 'A moment's rest.'
A sly grin tugged the corners of Thaddeus's mouth, as he considered Aramus's request. 'Do you concede the bout, then, brother?'
Aramus grinned in reply. 'Not hardly. If it comes to it, I can keep this up from here to Calderis.'
Thaddeus wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of a bare hand. 'If we should try that,' he said, chuckling, 'I think I'd succumb to boredom before I ever fell before your blows.'
'Perhaps we're too evenly matched, at that.' Aramus stuck out his hand. 'Then let's call it a draw, or a postponement if nothing else.'
'Agreed,' Thaddeus answered, grasping Aramus's wrist. His grin widened. 'But I'd have beaten you sooner or later, Aramus.'
Aramus tightened his grip around Thaddeus's wrist. 'A postponement, then.'
The two Space Marines moved to the side of the hall, where towels hung from a brass rail. They wiped the sweat and grime from their faces and arms in silence, their bodies gradually relaxing, heart-rates slowing and breathing returning to normal rhythms.
'That was a devious feint you made there at the beginning, Aramus,' Thaddeus said at length. He tapped his left temple, just above his ear. 'You almost had me then.'
Aramus's lips curled in a devious grin. 'If you weren't so damned hard-headed, I would have.' He stretched the fingers of his right hand, opening and closing his fist. 'Like hitting ceramite, that skull of yours.'
Thaddeus chuckled, and hung his towel around his thick neck. He paused for a moment, thoughtfully. 'Aramus, I meant to ask before. How is your squad faring?'
Aramus's lips tightened, the humour draining from his expression. It had been only a matter of months since he'd been promoted to the rank of brother-sergeant and given command of the Fifth Company's Third Squad, the third of six tactical squads in the company. Only a few months the commander of the Third Squad, and already Aramus had lost three battle-brothers in the undertaking on Zalamis. Counting himself, there were only seven Astartes in the squad at the moment, and barring reinforcements the Third Squad would be operating at partial strength for the time being. Aramus had hoped to redress the recent losses once they returned to the Fifth Company's battle-barge, Scientia Est Potentia, either by drawing Space Marines from other squads operating at or above full strength, or through the promotion of Blood Ravens Scouts to full battle-brother status. But en route to Scientia Est Potentia after the undertaking on Zalamis, the Armageddon had changed course, and was now bound for the Aurelia sub-sector.
'Well enough, Thaddeus,' Aramus replied in measured tones. 'We have been drilling, these last weeks, adapting battle plans and strategies to our reduced numbers.'
Thaddeus nodded, thoughtfully. His own command, the Seventh Squad, one of two assault squads in the Fifth Company, had suffered lighter losses on Zalamis and was currently at a strength of nine Space Marines in total, one of whom was still recovering from his injuries with the help of the company Apothecary.
'So,' Thaddeus said, finally. He brightened somewhat, and clapped his hands together, punctuating the end of the previous discussion. 'Aurelia, eh?'
'Aurelia,' Aramus replied, nodding. 'I'd not thought to come back this way, I'll admit.'
'Nor did I, brother.'
The two Blood Ravens had both been born and raised on Meridian, capital of the sub-sector, and both recruited into the Chapter during the same Blood Trials, more than two decades before. Unlike other Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, though, many of whom had their own home worlds and who might well serve on the planets of their birth throughout the long years of service to their Chapter, the Blood Ravens were a Crusading Chapter, with no home but the massive fortress-monastery Omnis Arcanum and the ships of the fleet that followed in her wake. Once inducted into the Chapter, Blood Ravens seldom returned to their home worlds.
And while the desert world of Calderis was light years away from the world of their birth, it fell within the Aurelia sub-sector and so was governed by Meridian, which was much closer than either of them ever expected to come to their original home.
Not, that is, that the home recalled in the memories of the two Space Marines was the same. Aramus had been born into luxury, a member of the upper classes in their high-habs, while Thaddeus had grown up a ganger from the low-level habs. Born and raised only kilometres from one another, the two had effectively come from different worlds. But since passing the Blood Trials, and then their initiation into the ranks of the Astartes, they were battle-brothers, a bond more powerful and real than any ties of blood or kinship.
'Tell me, Thaddeus, do you suppose…' Aramus began, but left off as they felt the deck shifting beneath their feet.
Though the sparring hall looked the same as it had before, and the sound of their voices still echoed off the far walls in just the same way, still the two Blood Ravens could sense that the world had changed around them. It was as though there had been a man screaming in the next room all this while, and that the two had only noticed it now that the screaming had stopped and a palpable silence had taken its place.
The screaming they hadn't noticed had been the discharge of the strike cruiser's warp engines, the psychic trauma of it hidden from the passenger areas of the Armageddon by heavy shielding, that could not quite entirely block its effects from those within. Beyond the shielded hull had lain the incomprehensible dimensions of the immaterium, home of madness and monsters.
But the warp engines had gone silent, the discharge ended, and now there was nothing beyond the hull of the strike cruiser but the more familiar, saner dimensions of normal space. The Armageddon had made the transition from the immaterium back into real space.
Before either Space Marine could speak, an intercom chimed, hidden in the rafters high overhead, and a voice buzzed out.
'This is Sergeant Merrik. All squad leaders to the command deck for immediate briefing.'
Thaddeus and Aramus exchanged a glance, and then hurried towards the entrance to the sparring hall, all jests and jibes forgotten. They had learned as initiates that, when Merrik called, it didn't pay to keep him waiting.
SERGEANT MERRIK STOOD beside the captain's chair on the command dais, looking out over the railing at the command deck proper and the forward viewport beyond. Like the rest of the ships in the Blood Ravens fleet, the Armageddon was crewed almost entirely by servitors; half-human cyborgs wired directly into the ship's weapons, engines, and communications. At the control stations that ringed the command dais, dozens of servitors devoted their entire attentions to crystals and controls, monitoring the ship's myriad systems and processes. The only humans in evidence were Chapter serfs, some of the hundred or so onboard who served the ship and her crew, and none of these were responsible for anything other than routine maintenance and cleaning.
Merrik was dressed in full power armour, the ceramite enamelled blood-red; on his left shoulder-guard the midnight-black raven with the teardrop of blood at its heart that was the symbol of the Blood Ravens, on his right shoulder-g
uard the upwards-pointing arrow of a tactical squad with a number ''I'' emblazoned upon it. Each shoulder-guard, right and left, was the colour of ivory, and rimmed in midnight black. If his bearing and position on the dais were not evidence enough, to say nothing of the reputation of nearly two centuries of decorated service, these emblems and colours alone would mark him as the leader of Fifth Company's First Squad, first of six tactical squads. Onboard the strike cruiser Armageddon, however, Merrik was not merely squad leader, but acting Commander at Sail.
As was proper in a ship of the Adeptus Astartes, the only officers onboard the strike cruiser were Space Marines, Merrik chief among them. In the enginarium in the lower decks, where the massive warp engines were even now only beginning to spin down, Techmarine Martellus oversaw the ship's mechanical systems; that is, when his attention could be torn away from the empty Dreadnought assembly they were transporting back to the Scientia Est Potentia. The Dreadnought, lacking the biological component of an Astartes to guide it, had been only recently refitted and refurbished by the tech-priests of Mars, and was nearing the end of a years-long journey via one ship or another to its final home in the Fifth Company. Just who would be encased in the Dreadnought armour, just which Astartes would be granted the great honour of living beyond death within its shell, their remains suspended within and their minds animating the war-engine, none could say.
The ship's captain a Blood Raven, and a Techmarine of the Chapter at her engines - not only were the few officers onboard the Armageddon Space Marines, they were more importantly Blood Ravens. Even in the case of the ship's astropath, instead of a member of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, the Armageddon instead employed Lexicanium Konan, a servant of the Blood Ravens Librarium. In fact, of all the ship's command functions, only that of Navigator was filled by any but Blood Ravens, the inscrutable Lord Principal in his dome an inhuman scion of the Navis Nobilite. But then, Sergeant Merrik found it difficult to imagine what kind of human could descend from the Navigator Houses, their third eye able to peer beyond the veil of space to guide a ship through the insane geometries of the empyrium, and yet still be found suitable for a place in the rolls of a Codex Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.
Merrik's idle musings were interrupted by the sound of approaching feet. Not the heavy tread of a Space Marine in power armour, but the lighter footfalls of an unarmoured human. Merrik turned to face the Chapter serf who approached, his eyes lowered to the ground deferentially.
'Report,' Merrik said simply, without preamble.
Like all the Chapter serfs on board the Armageddon, and in fact on all the ships of the Blood Ravens fleet, this man was a fiercely loyal adherent of one of the lesser orders of the Blood Ravens' Cult. As the serf lifted his gaze momentarily to look upon the sergeant's face, Merrik recognized him as a one-time aspirant to the Blood Ravens Chapter, who had succeeded in the Blood Trials on his native world decades before, but who had been found unsuitable for initiation before the first of the implants had been administered. As often happened in the cases of such unfortunates, this man's life had been spared, and given new meaning, as a place was found for him in the service of the Chapter. Having served long years on board the Armageddon, he had risen to the rank of deck hand, and was one of a dozen such serfs who routinely relayed reports from the servitors to the officers - having learned enough of the binary-squeal language of the cyborgs to translate it into more easily comprehensible Low Gothic - or else relayed messages from one officer to another.
'Sir,' the Chapter serf answered with a deeper bow, 'passive sensors confirm that we have reached the outskirts of the Calderis system.'
'Time to planet-side?'
'Techmarine Martellus sends his compliments, sir,' the Chapter serf replied quickly, 'and says that with sublight engines at full burn we should make planetfall before the day is out.'
Sergeant Merrik dismissed the Chapter serf with a nod, and went back to regarding the forward viewport. At the centre of the heavily reinforced window he could see a star burning, baleful and red. Somewhere in the black void around that sun circled their destination, the desert world Calderis. And somewhere on that desert world, Merrik hoped, they would find Captain Thule and his recruiting party. Or, failing that, they would discover what had befallen Thule and his people, and then Merrik and the others would seek revenge.
'AS YOU ARE all aware,' Sergeant Merrik said, once the squad leaders had gathered on the command deck, 'we are now inbound for Calderis, in the Aurelia sub-sector.'
There were four Space Marines gathered on the dais before him, all like Merrik encased in their full power armour. Together, they represented the leadership of the Blood Ravens onboard the Armageddon, with centuries of experience between them. The youngest, Sergeants Aramus and Thaddeus, had yet to earn a single service stud, while the oldest, Sergeant Tarkus, already had three service studs and was on his way to a fourth.
'Before leaving the Zalamis system some weeks back, our Lexicanium received an astropathic call from Librarian Niven, who accompanied Captain Thule on a recruiting mission to Calderis over two months ago. For reasons as yet unclear, Niven's telepathic message was fragmentary, garbled, but enough reached our Lexicanium to get the message across. Captain Thule and his party were under attack by a considerable number of feral orks, and Thule put out a call for reinforcements.'
Merrik paused, studying the faces before him, seeing the careful attention writ on each.
'The transport which carried the recruiting party to Calderis is not due to return for some time, and the Armageddon was the only Blood Ravens vessel in range to respond to the call. Now, I don't need to remind you that we are already operating on reduced strength after the recent action on Zalamis, but our orders in this instance are clear. We will go planet-side and offer whatever assistance the captain requires.'
'What is the latest from Librarian Niven?' Sergeant Tarkus asked.
Merrik regarded the veteran campaigner. It was the right question to ask at this moment, information whose omission in Merrik's summary was more than suspicious.
Only a few years Merrik's junior, Tarkus should have been given a command of his own by now. But he had served for so long beneath such an illustrious group of squad leaders - including Captain Davian Thule himself when he had still been merely Sergeant Thule - that Tarkus had not yet been given the chance. Recently, and despite Merrik's recommendations to the contrary, Thule had instead promoted the younger Battle-Brother Aramus to squad leadership and the rank of sergeant, and assigned Tarkus to act as Aramus's number two in the squad. Tarkus was a loyal Blood Raven and an exemplary Space Marine, so he would do as ordered, but Merrik could not help but wonder if his old friend resented once more being passed over for a younger, more visible Space Marine.
'There is no word, I'm afraid,' Merrik answered at last. 'After that first signal, our Lexicanium has had no further astropathic communication from Librarian Niven. Now that we have re-emerged in normal space, we are attempting to establish vox communication with Thule's party, but as yet have not made contact.'
The other Space Marines exchanged glances at that.
'The captain had only a handful of Blood Ravens with him, and most of those mere Scouts,' rumbled Sergeant Avitus, his voice tinged with a machine-like buzz, his eyes flashing darkly. The lower half of Avitus's jaw and most of his throat had been replaced by augmetic long years before, after a battle with a tyranid norn-queen left him with injuries that the Apothecaries and his own body could not repair, and which therefore the Techmarines were required to address. 'If there are as many greenskins down there as you suggest, is there any reason to suspect that Thule and his people are still alive?'
Merrik turned his gaze on Avitus. The leader of Ninth Squad, a Devastator squad, Avitus was a mountain of barely controlled rage. It was whispered in the halls of the Scientia Est Potentia that Avitus's soul had died months before, back on Kronus during the Battle of Victory Bay, leaving his body to go on and fight. It had been there that Avitus had watched
as his battle-brothers had been gunned down by misguided Imperial Guardsmen, killed by the same Imperial citizens he'd sworn his life to protect. Avitus had survived the barrage, and repaid it with a heavy flamer, scouring bunker after bunker of Guardsmen before moving on to deal burning death to the armed civilians who had thrown their lot in with the renegade Governor-Militant. Avitus had survived the undertaking on Kronus, but had carried away with him nothing but disdain for the common citizens of the Imperium, and precious little regard for his battle-brothers in the Blood Ravens, as well.
'Until we have solid evidence to the contrary,' Merrik replied evenly, 'we will operate under the assumption that Thule is still down there, and if he is then he'll require reinforcing.'
'What of the native population?' Sergeant Aramus put in. 'Calderis isn't heavily populated, as I understand it, but the numbers of inhabitants must still number in the millions.'
'What of them?' Avitus snarled, a growling sound buzzing from his throat. 'Pay them the slightest mind, brother, and that's more consideration than they'd ever give to you.'
'The planet below is Calderis, Brother-Sergeant Avitus,' Tarkus said in a metered voice, 'not Kronus. Perhaps you misheard the name?'
Avitus turned on Tarkus, eyes flashing. 'You'd protect disloyal, simpering fools, Tarkus?' The Devastator took a step towards Tarkus, and given the fury evident on Avitus's face it looked as though they might come to blows at any moment.
Tarkus just smiled, and held his hands out to either side, palm upwards, as though he were giving a benediction. 'The Emperor protects, Avitus. I merely carry out His will.'
Thaddeus chuckled, and Avitus turned his angry gaze on the younger sergeant, but the tension had broken. Avitus did not smile, but the rage in his face began to cool, and he took a step back, hands relaxing at his sides.
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