by C Z Dunn
‘Ah, flesh. The weak link in any system,’ Diezen said, gleefully.
‘If we could somehow hang on for three weeks then we might stand a sliver of a chance,’ said Serpicus. ‘Selenaz may be able to break the ork blockade and bombard their positions from orbit. Guard reinforcements would have time to make it in-system. The orks may grow bored of besieging us and turn upon themselves.’
‘If the ork forces are concentrated on the capital then any bombardment is just as likely to kill us as it is the greenskins. We had the advantage of deploying before the planet was invaded – any reinforcements who try to make it down here would have to run the gauntlet of not only the ork fleet but also the anti-aircraft fire from the ground,’ Balthasar countered. ‘As for the orks turning on each other? Their numbers are so great that whichever faction emerged victorious would still make short work of any survivors, especially if they’ve been starving for weeks.’
‘I did say it was only a sliver of a chance,’ Serpicus said. ‘What alternatives do we have?’
‘We could take the fight to the orks,’ said Balthasar.
‘Have you taken a blow to the head, brother?’ said Serpicus. ‘Should I call Rephial down here to examine you?’
Balthasar ignored the barbs. ‘It’s the last thing the orks would expect, so we gain the element of surprise. They won’t have had time to construct their defences properly so we’ll have them pretty much out in the open. And if the ork commander holds to type then he’ll already be in the city surveying what he has conquered.’
The Techmarine picked up Balthasar’s thread. ‘And if a strike team could get close enough to the ork commander and eliminate him…’
‘Best case scenario – the orks turn on themselves and do our job for us. Worst case – they have nobody to command them so we take advantage and drive them from the face of Honoria.’
Diezen tapped frantically at the brass machine. When it produced the slip of parchment, Balthasar snatched it from the tech-priest’s fingers, screwed it up and threw it to the far side of the command chamber.
‘I do not need you to tell me the odds, arch magos, to know how unlikely it is that this plan will succeed, because it is happening regardless,’ Balthasar said.
‘When?’ Serpicus asked.
‘Nightfall. It will give the Guardsmen time to rest, and we’ll be able to strike under the cover of darkness.’
‘This is suicide,’ Diezen scoffed.
‘Brother?’ Balthasar asked, ignoring the tech-priest.
‘It’s dangerous, it’s foolish and it’s unlikely it would succeed even if we had the strength of a Legion at our back,’ Serpicus said shaking his head. ‘I’ll have the forces gather in the assembly hall within the hour and you can go over the plan with them.’
‘Where are we now?’ Ezekiel asked.
‘You do not recognise it?’ the daemon countered. ‘It is where you were born, Ezekiel. Where you were reborn.’
Unlike on Korsh, here Ezekiel was given no physical form, instead watching events unfold from on high as if he were seeing them via a pict-feed. He looked on as hundreds of Dark Angels fell upon the backward planet, their bolters far too powerful for the crude armaments of a feudal people descended into superstition and barbarism. The walls of their keeps fell under constant assault from weapons their primitive minds could not comprehend let alone counter, their villages engulfed in cleansing flame that burned away the last vestiges of misguided worship. The weeks of fighting sped by in the space of moments until at last, the final battle was nigh.
‘Meroth…’ Ezekiel whispered.
‘Indeed,’ said the daemon, now inhabiting the body of the Dark Angel who rescued Ezekiel from his bondage, the Librarian who would become his first mentor, teaching him the rudiments of how to control his gifts before he had even completed the journey to the Rock.
Ezekiel watched passively as the Codicier stalked through the corridors of the keep, its doors thrown open willingly by the mute cult that maintained the place and protected the powerful asset held within. Meroth checked every room thoroughly, examining each ancient script or parchment he found and marking the most useful for incorporation into the Dark Angels’ own collections.
At last Meroth came to the final door, set into the floor, chained, barred and daubed with all manner of sigils and wards both sacred and profane, designed to neutralise both liberator and prisoner should they be tripped. The physical security measures were no difficult task for the Dark Angel to break, but the psychic locks warranted careful removal, and it was many hours before the door was safe to open.
‘How did Meroth know how to break all of the seals?’ Ezekiel enquired as his former mentor went about his task. ‘Some of those wards are of dark origin, beyond the ken of the Dark Angels Librarius. The texts within the keep did not impart that knowledge, so how is it possible that he lifted them so easily?’
‘There are some secrets of our Chapter that are as yet unknown to you, brother,’ said Meroth in his slow, considered tone, which Ezekiel had not heard in many decades. ‘Or perhaps I gave him a helping hand,’ he added, his voice now that of the daemon.
Before Ezekiel could say anything, the door to the oubliette flew open and he found himself possessing the body of his ten-year-old self, chained to a cold stone floor, looking up at the opening in the ceiling where Meroth was staring down at him from beneath his psychic hood.
‘You could have slain them all,’ Meroth said. ‘Why did you endure this?’
Ezekiel replied, the same words he had uttered almost four hundred and fifty years ago.
‘I saw salvation coming on wings of fire. Now it is here.’
Darkness swallowed them both.
The Vostroyans washed and changed in silence.
After Allix and Kas returned with Ladbon’s body, they reported the sewer vulnerability to the Techmarine, who despatched teams to seal the manhole covers. Allix had volunteered the squad for the duty but the Dark Angel declined their offer. Dmitri and some of the other Vostroyan’s believed it was because the Space Marine had taken pity on them, but Allix knew the truth, knew the Techmarine’s reasoning; they were exhausted and without rest would become a liability. They needed to live now so that they could die better later.
Mute had scouted the inner citadel and found an unlocked storage room used to house cleaning products, now being put to good use removing the filth and gore from their bodies. Gaspar and Grigori had joined them later, eventually turning up with a pile of uniforms that, while they could not be described as clean, were certainly fresher than the fatigues and tunics they were removing. Nobody wanted to ask the brothers where they had obtained them from.
‘Here,’ Allix said, throwing Marita a pair of trousers and a jacket. ‘Clean yourself up and put these on. I can’t promise it will make you feel any better, but at least you won’t be caked in sewage.’
The Honorian girl had barely spoken since Ladbon’s squad had rescued her in the sewers, the only sounds she had made the occasional sob she had failed to stifle. When she had spoken it had been to ask if she could see Ladbon’s body, causing an awkward silence to form among the survivors. ‘Perhaps later,’ was the eventual answer from Allix, not wishing to add to Marita’s distress by showing her how brutally the greenskins had slain him.
Marita picked the garments up from where they had landed at her feet and slowly stood up, trying the fatigues against her to check the length. She smiled weakly at Allix but found her eyes drawn to the Vostroyan’s bare chest and the puckered latticework of scar tissue. Marita’s stare was only interrupted when she realised that Allix was glaring back at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Marita began. ‘I didn’t mean to–’
‘I have two brothers, both older than me,’ Allix began coldly. The other members of the squad turned away, in part to give Allix and Marita the illusion of privacy, in part out of unease at ha
ving heard this story before. ‘My eldest brother, Mikhail, is an imbecile. I do not say that to be cruel – he is, medically, an imbecile. My other brother, Lukas, is prone to fits, has been since birth. One moment he is fine, the next he is a frothing mess, not even knowing who or where he is.’
‘I really didn’t–’
Allix didn’t allow Marita to finish her sentence. ‘Do you think any of that mattered to the recruiters on Vostroya? Do you think that when they came knocking on our door to take the firstborn son and whisk him off to the stars to die in the name of the Emperor that they would take into account that my brother couldn’t even spell “Emperor”, let alone have any concept of who He is?
‘And if they did overlook Mikhail, do you think they would do the same for Lukas? His impairment is not so obvious. As long as he could hold a lasrifle the right way around, he would have been taken in Mikhail’s place, a danger not only to himself but those he would fight alongside too.’
Allix’s tone softened. ‘I bear these scars out of sacrifice, sacrifice for my family. I became the son the tithe on Vostroya demanded and, in doing so, I found a new family – and as with my biological family back home, I am prepared to do anything to keep them safe, to make any sacrifice demanded of me.
‘You will find this too, Marita.’ Allix, who by now had slipped on a fresh vest and tunic, approached the Honorian girl and placed a hand on her stomach. ‘Just as I was prepared to make my sacrifice, just as Ladbon was prepared to make his, you too will do anything for this child you are carrying.’
Allix put both arms around Marita and embraced her, the shoulder of the relatively clean jacket instantly soaking with the girl’s tears.
The moment was broken by the sound of hundreds of pairs of Astra Militarum-issue boots marching past the store room. Gaspar opened the door a crack and peered out.
‘Something’s happening,’ he said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘It was you?’ Ezekiel said. ‘You were the one who freed me on Delphyna Three centuries ago.’
The daemon now wore the form of Azrael, Grand Master of the Dark Angels. Ezekiel was in possession of his own body, albeit clad in the armour of the Grand Master of the Librarius, the Book of Salvation locked at his waist, Traitor’s Bane clasped in his hand. The pair of them stood facing each other on a white plain, snow falling heavily around them. In the distance, behind Azrael, Ezekiel could make out the shapes of Dark Angels aircraft rapidly converging on their position.
‘Perhaps it was,’ the daemon said with a grin. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t. None of what I have shown you, what I am about to show you, is true. Or all of it is true. Or only some of it is true.’
‘I have no time for your riddles and nonsense, daemon.’ Ezekiel hefted Traitor’s Bane, imbued it with psychic energy and thrust it into Azrael’s chest. The Dark Angels Grand Master fell to his knees, blood pouring from the rent in his breastplate, crimson staining the ground below, melting the fresh snowfall.
‘Just as the future is fluid and unwritten, so too is the past,’ the daemon said getting to its feet, the wound and the damage to Azrael’s armour repairing instantly. ‘Nothing is fixed as far as the warp is concerned. Past, present, future – all of them are as malleable as each other. I show you only versions, some of which are canon, some of which are not, some which could be and some that will never come to pass.’
The noise of the inbound flyers grew incredibly loud, forcing the daemon to raise its voice.
‘Take what is about to happen, for instance.’
Scores of Thunderhawks, Dark Talons and Nephilim, some bearing the livery of the Dark Angels, others the markings and insignia of their successors, passed overhead. Ezekiel turned to see something that he had only heard and read about, seen pictures and illustrations of in the tomes in the Rock’s archives.
The Fang.
Its vast edifice thrust high into the Fenrisian sky, the peak obscured by high dark clouds, and mighty bridges connected it to the surrounding mountains and passes. Smoke and flame billowed from its thick walls, the obvious result of earlier assaults, and though an overwhelming force approached it, all of its defences lay silent. The first wave of flyers unleashed their arsenal, weakening further the damaged structure, and when the subsequent ranks let loose their missiles, vast cracks began to form in the ancient stone. Ezekiel looked on as the final barrage was unleashed, the Fang splitting in two at the middle and sending more than ten thousand years of history crashing to the ground as rubble.
‘One way of looking at this is as a natural extension of the narrative of the Imperium. Animosity has existed between the Dark Angels and Space Wolves since the time of the Great Crusade, often spilling over into armed conflict and bloodshed. Is it so much of a stretch to believe that Azrael – or any other Dark Angels Chapter Master – would jump upon the slightest excuse to engage in open warfare? Would it not be easy to manipulate him into such a situation, even if he knew he was being manipulated?’
Everything went silent. Snow and aircraft hung motionless in the sky. Flames froze like ice. The daemon and Ezekiel were the only things moving.
‘Or you could look at it this way – the details are all wrong. The markings on some of those flyers? They’re not even known Dark Angels successor Chapters, and as for those weapons loadouts? Hardly standard for those patterns. And look at the Fang. Of course, it has been attacked in the past, even been besieged and damaged, but the Space Wolves have always been able to defend it in the end. This? This just looks like they’ve rolled over and played dead. It runs counter to everything known about them. But none of those facts are the most glaring error here. Do you know what is?’
‘Enlighten me, daemon,’ Ezekiel said.
‘It’s you,’ the daemon said, licking Azrael’s blood-coated teeth. ‘How can you be here? You’re dead, remember?’
The darkness returned.
Rephial ignored the stench of burning bone and the cooling blood spraying onto his face. Protesting, the bone saw finally made it through Ezekiel’s breastplate, which broke open with a noise loud enough to attract the attention of everybody else in the medicae. Several of the Imperial Guard medics stopped what they were doing, morbidly fascinated by the apparent act of desecration being carried out by the Apothecary.
Uncaring of his audience’s opinion, Rephial shoved the fingers of both hands into the gap in the Librarian’s ribcage and pulled it apart, exposing the lifeless internal organs beneath.
‘Forceps!’ the Apothecary yelled at nobody in particular. ‘Somebody fetch me a set of forceps!’ he yelled again when he did not receive a response, each Guardsman rooted to the spot in fear. Hesitantly, a Mordian doctor approached a table upon which was scattered a variety of medical implements and picked up a set of forceps.
‘They’re too small,’ Rephial snapped. ‘Fetch me the others.’
The Mordian dropped them back onto the table with a loud clatter and picked up a larger set in their place, which he carried over to the Dark Angel. Rephial snatched them from him without thanks or acknowledgement. He thrust the forceps into Ezekiel’s chest and spun the mechanism until they were fully extended.
‘Come on, Ezekiel,’ Rephial whispered as he thrust his hands into the Librarian’s chest cavity and began to massage the primary heart. ‘I need your help here.’
Something was amiss.
Ezekiel still wore the armour of the Grand Master of the Librarius, still carried the accoutrements of that office, and the daemon continued to wear Azrael’s form, but there were others with them now. Interrogator-Chaplain Asmodai, Turmiel and Balthasar – wearing the off-white Tactical Dreadnought armour of the Deathwing – struggled to open a huge door made of carved bone along with another figure: a Space Marine in silver Terminator armour with Chapter markings Ezekiel did not recognise. Though this was strange enough in itself, it was the feeling of disjointedness, something he had felt severa
l times before, that was the root of his unease.
‘We are in the Eye of Terror,’ he said to the daemon, seemingly unheard by the other four Space Marines.
‘No,’ said the daemon, likewise not heard by the others. ‘I still reign on Korsh and you are a corpse on Honoria. This is merely a vision. None of this is real. Or at least it isn’t real yet.’
With a combined effort, the door swung slowly open, parts of it cracking and splintering where ceramite pauldron pressed against ancient bone.
‘Remember, we are only here for him,’ the daemon said in Azrael’s voice. ‘No matter who – or what – else is in the other cells, we take only him.’ The others nodded in acknowledgement.
Balthasar and Turmiel led the way in, the former’s storm bolter raised and ready to fire should any target present itself, followed by Asmodai and the silver-armoured stranger. Azrael gestured for Ezekiel to go next, which he reluctantly did.
The moment he was across the threshold his sense of unease amplified tenfold, psychic agony etched onto his features. Turmiel and the stranger mirrored his pain. Struggling to focus, Ezekiel could see that the walls and floor of the corridor they were in moved and writhed as if this structure were a living organism. Asmodai knelt down to inspect the bizarre material further, reaching out with a gauntleted hand, which he slowly moved away after realising what the hallway was made of.
‘They’re bodies,’ Asmodai said, rising to his feet and checking the walls. ‘Still-living bodies that have been fused together to build… whatever this is.’
‘Some of them aren’t human,’ Balthasar added, the lume mounted on the shoulder of his armour picking out the form of an eldar among the morass.
‘They’re nulls,’ the stranger said, his breathing heavy and ragged. ‘Whoever built this prison knew what they were doing.’
‘Can you continue, brothers?’ Azrael said, addressing Ezekiel and Turmiel. Both Dark Angels nodded their affirmation. ‘And you, Draigo?’ the Grand Master added, the contempt in his voice unshrouded.