Black Tide

by James Swallow

  * * *

  Dangling from his manacles, Rafen rose into the light. He struggled against the iron restraints, but he could find no purchase. Each move he made only sent him twisting, the chains cording around his limbs.

  The mutant freaks on the boat snarled at those on the dock, the animal noises evidently some kind of language; in turn, the Atlas rolled away, and Rafen found himself dragged up over a crest of bone-white stone, swinging this way and that as the crane bounced in its mountings.

  He struggled to twist into a position where he could observe, blinking away the purple after-images on his retina from the kiss of the trawler crew’s shock-staves.

  They passed a steep cliff angled away from him, rising to a sharp point. Etched into the rock was a blackened design that resembled a monstrous wing and a claw—the mark of the warriors of Fulgrim and Fabius Bile’s former Legion, the Emperor’s Children.

  A low, thickset tower emerged first, rising up over the line of the island. Sheer, angled sides with few portals fell away from a ziggurat roof. He spotted what might have been communicator vanes up there, flexing in the constant winds, and other antennae that seemed alien in form and function, crystals at their tips glowing a sullen blue-white.

  The tank rolled around a curving roadway, on one side leading down into a wide beach of shale and algae-slicked rocks. Stubby pillars emerged from the beach at regular intervals, stretching away in a line that vanished around the arc of the atoll. To the other side of the road was what at first glance resembled a vast impact crater; but as Rafen tugged on his chains to steady himself, he took a second look. Inside the crater on the far side he could see levels cut into the walls, one atop another, extending downward out of his sight, with balconies of skeletal metal impact-bonded to the stone.

  Everywhere there were metal tubes growing out of the ground, sprouting like steel trees. Each of them ended in a sphere made of iron mesh, and from them came that foul stink of tyranid pheromones. The entire island was awash with it, a pall hanging over everything.

  Rafen became aware of a siren honking somewhere down in the crater. He heard the sizzle of laser fire and the tank came to an abrupt, grinding halt. Seizing the moment, the Blood Angel gathered in handfuls of chain and moved, hand over hand, up towards the spool of the crane. He was close to the top when a figure swathed in ragged, hooded robes threw itself over the lip of the crater and sprinted across the roadway, making for the beach.

  Rafen hesitated, expecting the mutants inside the Atlas’ cab to take a shot at the runner; but they did nothing. He could not see any detail of the figure, only that it was humanoid and larger than a normal man. As large, he realised, as an Astartes.

  The hooded escapee scrambled down the steep cliff and on to the shale. As his blackened, bare feet touched the beach, a new siren sounded. This was a four-tone clarion, a trumpet-call that brayed from the line of pillars. Rafen watched as the upper sections of the two closest columns cracked into quarters and slowly fanned open.

  The runner slowed; Rafen had expected him to bolt for the water, but he did nothing of the kind. There was no fatigue about the robed man—only a strange air of resignation.

  A voice crackled out from hidden vox relays. “Don’t be a fool.” Rafen’s lip curled as he recognised Bile’s silken, metered tones, and for a split-second he thought the words were directed at him; but they were for the running man. “Turn back. Return, and this will be forgotten.”

  With care, the figure dropped to his haunches and went down upon the stony beach. Rafen heard the grinding of gears, and to his dismay he watched a pair of sentry cannons extrude from the open tops of the pillars. The alarm clarion sounded again, each iteration quicker and quicker.

  The man knelt on one knee, and the Blood Angel’s breath caught in his throat as the robed figure bowed his head and crossed his hands over his chest. He heard the distinct murmur of a prayer; the Litany of the Aquila, the age-old entreaty to the God-Emperor for deliverance from evil. Rafen knew what would happen next. He cried out and struggled against his bindings, snapping one of the chains. The robed man did not react.

  “So be it, then,” said the voice from the speakers. In the next moment the cannons tracked, locked and fired. A brief storm of energy shrieked across the beach and tore the runner—the Astartes—apart. A slick of bloody mist and glass-fused sand were all that was left behind.

  Cursing, thrashing in his manacles, Rafen tried to break free; but then the Atlas started up and rolled on. The mutant crew, he realised, had known all along what would happen; they had paused because they wanted to watch.

  Rafen felt as if he had been plunged into ice. To see a battle-brother perish on the field of conflict was one thing—and he was certain now that the one he saw die was without doubt a Space Marine of some stripe—but to witness one perish in so ignoble a fashion made him angry and heartsick in equal measure. He tried to comprehend what he had seen and could find no reason for it.

  The Atlas swerved and spun to a halt upon a wind-scoured ferrocrete apron surrounded by fortress walls on three sides. The chains unlocked and he tumbled to the ground, landing poorly. Rafen pulled himself up as the vehicle rolled away, scanning the area.

  Immediately he saw more of the strange bestial mutants gathered in guard posts and cupolas behind the barrels of autocannons and flame-throwers. But what caught his attention were the others. He could only see two of them, watching indolently from an arched gallery, but they were Astartes-tall and broad with it, men seemingly cut from planes of meat like those in a butcher’s shop window. At first he wondered if they were Traitor Marines, but he dismissed the idea. They wore odd mixes of combat gear but they were not clad in the corrupted versions of power armour favoured by the legions of the archenemy. Despite the mark he had seen upon the cliff-face, he saw no recognisable turncoat sigils, only the eight-point star of the Ruinous Powers. If anything, the men reminded Rafen of Fabius himself, towering figures that radiated menace.

  The sound of a rusted gate made him turn around. A saw-toothed portal opened and from it came a man in robes like those of the suicide. A hand, wiry of muscle with skin like old leather, reached up to draw back the hood. “If you wish to die now, cousin, the animals will accommodate you. Otherwise, I’d say best not to make any sudden moves.”

  Lank hair that would have been grey-white, if not for the grime in it, framed an old, scarred face heavy with a ragged beard. The grizzled newcomer had no eyes; there was only a thickness of molten, waxy tissue over the orbits in his skull. Sable lines of ink were visible on his sunken cheeks and the cords of his neck, forming sharp-angled letters in a tongue Rafen could not read. Still, the warrior knew the pattern of them well enough to recognise the runes of the tribes of Fenris. The old man showed teeth, yellowed fangs visible against his lips. “Name your liege,” he demanded.

  “You’re a Son of Russ. A Space Wolf.” Rafen found it hard to believe. A Space Marine, even an old, blind veteran without weapons or armour, was the last thing he had expected to see here.

  “But you are not,” said the sightless warrior, with a long sniff. “I’d know it if you had any ice in your veins. And you’d not have waited to try killing me. So I ask again. Name your liege.”

  Rafen saw little reason to make a secret of his lineage; had the Space Wolf eyes with which to see, the winged teardrop design branded into the meat of his shoulder would have told him the answer. “I am a Son of Sanguinius, of the IX Chapter Astartes.”

  “Heh.” The veteran gave a mirthless grin. “A Blood Angel. Of course. I can smell how pretty you are from here.”

  Rafen took an angry step towards the Space Wolf. “Don’t mock me, old man. Perhaps I should do as you say and kill you! For I cannot think of any reason why an Astartes would be here, in this fortress of the archenemy, unless he was a traitor!”

  The smile dropped off the other man’s face, and he bared his fangs. “Whelp! You know nothing of me or this place!” He nodded bleakly. “But you will. Oh yes, you’
ll know.” He beckoned him with a brusque gesture. “Follow me, or don’t. The splices will use you for gunnery practice if you stand still too long.”

  Grudgingly, Rafen fell into step behind the Space Wolf, trailing him in through the entranceway. “Splices…” he echoed. “Those mutants?”

  “It’s what he calls them,” said the veteran, pausing to cough out a gobbet of phlegm. “They were common men once, until Bile decided he could gain something from their torment.”

  “Fabius Bile. Where is he?” said Rafen.

  “Pray you never have the misfortune to find out,” came the warning. The gate closed slowly behind them until the tunnel they walked through was in pitch-blackness. Rafen’s occulobe implant contracted to give him a muddy cast of vision, but the blind Space Wolf walked with surety, as if his sight were perfect.

  The Blood Angel frowned and stopped. The other warrior kept walking. “I am a prisoner of a Chaos renegade,” said Rafen. “What does that make you?”

  “The same. But much longer in the tooth. Much, much longer.”

  “Is that why you’re his servant, then? Fetching me for him like an obedient dog? Did he break you?”

  “You know nothing, boy.” The old man halted.

  “I know that men say the Sons of Russ are indomitable, fighters of endless courage and stone will. Yet I look at you and the lie is put to those words!”

  The Space Wolf gave a savage growl and spun to face him, his hands coming up in claws; but he hesitated, and his arms fell to his sides. Even in the gloom, Rafen could see the expression on his face. Not anger, but something else… resignation. “There is no escape from this place,” said the veteran. “No way out, save the one you witnessed.” He nodded in the direction of the doorway. “Ask yourself why one of us would willingly take death instead of life in this place. Ask that and think on the answer, Blood Angel.”

  “There are more Astartes here? From other Chapters?”

  “Ja. And all of them thought as you do now.” The old man sighed and came closer, his voice falling low. “I have had this conversation with new arrivals many times, and it is always the same. They ask why I am here. They ask why I do not resist.”

  “We are Astartes,” Rafen snapped, his ire building slow and cold. “We never capitulate. We were made for challenge!”

  “What is your name, Blood Angel?”

  “Rafen, son of Axan. Sergeant.”

  “I am Nurhunn Vetcha, Long Fang. Do you know my name?”

  He shook his head. “I do not.”

  “That is because I am dead, like every cousin and kinsman here. We resist, Rafen, as well as we can. We resist by staying alive as long as possible, by making every breath we take an act of defiance!”

  “How many of those mutant freaks can there be?” Rafen demanded. “Are you all without hope? Has no man ever drawn enough courage to take this place and raze it?”

  “Many have tried.”

  “They tried and failed?”

  “They tried and died,” Vetcha said firmly. He turned a stoic face to the Blood Angel. “I resist by believing, boy. Each day I ask Russ and the Emperor to witness what happens in this place and give me the strength to endure it. I do this because I know one day I will have my opportunity!” A stir of fury laced the old man’s words. “I wait, Rafen. I wait for the day. For the moment I know is coming. Even a knife made of lead is sharp enough for a single cut.”

  “And in the meantime, Fabius Bile lives on and continues his crimes against the galaxy.” Rafen shook his head.

  The Space Wolf walked away. “When you have been here as long as I have, Blood Angel, you will understand. Now, come. They flush this channel with promethium to kill any rippers that may make it past the pheromone shield. You would not wish to be here when that happens.”

  At the far end of the dark tunnel, another set of gates retracted into the ground and Rafen hissed as needles of pain lanced his dark-adapted eyes. Blinking quickly, he found himself standing on the lip of a spiral stone ramp that descended into the vast pit he had glimpsed from the Atlas. What he had thought were distinct levels were in fact all part of one single inclined slope that wound around and around the inside of the crater, descending towards an oval enclosure far below. Hundreds of uniform cargo containers lay in rows along the slope, the standard rectangular boxes of iron like those used on thousands of starships. They were fixed in place with fat gobs of hardened ferrocrete, reinforced with sheets of steel that looked like they had been cut from trawler hulls. Strings of lumes hung over the spaces between the walls and the containers, dark now but placed so they would throw illumination in every corner when the sun set. Abhorrent scrawls of blasphemous text decorated the stone bulwarks, and small altars protruded from the sides of the stockade at regular intervals; the little platforms were soaked in blood so thickly caked it was as black as ink, and grotesque swarms of flies hummed in the air. Rafen looked away, disgusted.

  More of the mutants—the “splices”—ambled back and forth over the tops of the containers, all of them armed with electromag weapons. Rafen saw beings that were closer to apes than men, others that had bovine or serpent-like attributes. It chilled him to think that these devolved horrors might once have been innocent men.

  “This way,” said Vetcha.

  Rafen followed him warily, conscious of the heavy shapes of bat-like things that circled through the air below the lip of the crater, riding on thermal updrafts. He couldn’t see them clearly enough to determine if they were mechanical constructs or more splices; but he could see the shapes of heavy lascannons dangling from their claws. He glanced up at the sheer walls of the crater, gauging distances and looking for handholds. There was no cover and the odds were poor; he had no doubt the bats were some kind of sentinel, constantly circling, waiting for someone to make an attempt to flee. Here and there he saw blackened pockmarks on the stone where rock had been turned to obsidian from a beam strike.

  The Blood Angel weighed his chances for escape, considering. Was it worth it? He estimated he had a fair probability of making it to the crater lip up above, but even if he did, where could he go? The sentry guns ringed the island, and beyond them lay an ocean full of tyranid bioforms. In this place, so it seemed, freedom was a death sentence.

  And then there was the mission. Fabius Bile was here, and working his horrors. The sacred blood he had stolen could not be far from the renegade’s hand. Rafen thought on Vetcha’s words in the tunnel, considering them against his own circumstances. For now, so it seemed, the Blood Angel would follow along, eyes open and ready; he had to trust that Noxx and the others aboard the Neimos were still on their way. When they came, he would need to know as much as possible about this place.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Cheyne has summoned you,” said the Space Wolf. “Bile’s second-in-command.”

  Rafen gestured at a hissing snake-man that glowered down at him from an overhead gantry. “One of these freaks?”

  Vetcha shook his head. “No. Cheyne is something worse.”

  The Blood Angel had another question, but he forgot it as he passed in front of a heavy hatch leading into one of the cargo containers. A diamond window cut into the door showed the scene within; Rafen recognised the yellowish cast of armourglass. The material was technology from the Dark Ages, harder than steel, clear from the obverse side but opaque from the reverse. A dozen strikes from bolt shells would be needed to shatter it.

  Beyond the glass, he saw an Astartes bent in prayer on the floor of a dingy cell. The warrior did not seem to be aware of him, instead lost in the depth of his meditation. The other man’s ebon skin was dull with a sheen of sweat.

  Rafen took a step towards the cell and the serpent-splice skittered forward, raising its weapon. The warrior felt a tug on his arm, and turned to find Vetcha holding him back. “Don’t give them an excuse,” said the Space Wolf in a low voice.

  “In there…” he said. “A brother of the Salamanders Chapter?”

&nbs
p; Vetcha nodded and pointed to another container some distance away. “Raven Guard.” He pointed to another, and another. “Tauran. Tiger Argent. And more.”

  “How many?” Rafen snapped.

  The veteran gestured towards another hatch set in the wall, and it creaked open on automatic pistons. “There are deaths all the time,” said Vetcha. “The count… is low.”

  The Blood Angel crossed the threshold and into darkness again. Before he could adjust his vision once more, the hatch slammed shut behind him and locked, separating him from the Space Wolf.

  Rafen banged on the metal. “Vetcha! Vetcha, what is this?”

  Then he heard the sound of a breath, and a grim, humourless snort. “Don’t make a friend of him, cousin. He’s the worst of them all.”

  At the far end of the container, he defined a figure sitting against the wall; another Astartes, stocky but slump-shouldered. “Rafen, of the Blood Angels,” he offered.

  The other man shot him a doleful look. He was dusky-skinned and drawn. “Tarikus. Doom Eagles. Not that those names have any meaning in this place.” Misery laced every word.

  “How long have you been here?” Rafen asked, coming closer.

  “I think three years. Perhaps five. The passage of time here is difficult to reckon.”

  “Five years?” The Blood Angel was shocked.

  Tarikus looked away. “Others have been here longer. Vetcha claims he has been a prisoner for more than a decade, but I give no credence to anything he says.”