[Dawn of War 03] - Tempest

by C. S. Goto - (ebook by Undead)

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  Pressed into a fissure in the rocks, I watched the heavy gunship manoeuvre; it was searching for the ideal landing spot amongst the rocky outcrops of the barren desert landscape, as the clouds in the sky above it started to thicken. The pale pinks and sickly purples began to swirl and billow into darkness, as though a pool of black ink had been dropped into the roiling mass, spilling out of the fire-enshrouded gunship.

  The ship itself was a radiant mix of startling blues and dazzling gold, hanging in the air with heavy menace, pouring flames out of its thrusters just to maintain its position and demonstrate its disregard for the force of gravity. As the sky darkened around it, I could sense the defiance seeping down from it like black rain.

  And then the rain really started to fall: great, solid, black droplets of acidic moisture fell from the gathering darkness, drilling into the sand and fizzing, staining it in random speckles.

  As I stared up at the gunship, half hidden in one of the dense rock formations that jutted down into the sandstone around a wide, level clearing in which I presumed the ship was about to land, the rain scraped dryly across my face. There is no moisture in this rain—it is dry as bones. It didn’t feel like rain at all.

  The gunship hovered on its thrusters, blasting jets of furious heat down into the growing inferno of the barren landscape; the flames and the intricate golden markings glittered brilliantly against the sickly, swirling dark around it. It was like a massive, cumbersome and ugly bird of prey, and I realised in that instant that it was looking for something. The analogy of the predator stuck in my mind, and I withdrew deeper into the cracked rocks, pressing my body out of sight in an attempt to avoid becoming prey for the monstrous bird. I was not sure that it had not seen me on the opposite cliff-face.

  In the absence of certainty, caution is a wise man’s valour. The maxim emerged naturally into my mind, and I almost smiled at its appropriateness: the gunship could have been sent by my brothers to take me home, but it could also have been something else entirely.

  Uncertainty is the seed of all knowledge—it is the catalyst of investigation.

  The gunship’s engines thundered and whined as the vessel dropped down onto the cracked, rocky pavement. Clouds of sand erupted from the down drafts, blowing a series of cavities into the soft sandstone beneath the flaring vents. Black rain sleeted down all around it, as though it were thickening the air itself to cushion the descent of the ungainly craft. Dark clouds billowed and roiled in nauseating patterns, pluming out of the armoured plating of the vessel as though sucked into the atmosphere by osmosis. A crackling, blue energy coursed over the surface of the gunship, defining its contours in a pulsating matrix of forked lightning. Shrouded in the commotion of darkness, the vessel was all but invisible as it touched down into the mist of sand.

  As the engines cut, the turmoil of dust began to settle and the black rain eased, as though the air was relaxing its efforts. The crackling lines of energy flickered and snapped, fading slightly, as the clouds of dark mist thinned noticeably.

  Leaning out from my hiding place in amongst the rocks, I could see the shape of the gunship emerging from the commotion.

  It’s a Thunderhawk. The name was lurking at the fore of my mind, waiting to be given a voice. That means that there are Space Marines in there. The knowledge was based on suddenly remembered experience; I had been in such vehicles myself, many times. The memories flooded back into my mind, riddling my brain with new images of blood red Space Marines and alien worlds. Thoughts of death and violence filled the scenes: I am the sword of Vidya.

  As the desert wind gusted past the Thunderhawk, it blew a moment of clarity across the hull, revealing a vivid blue and gold crest that I did not recognise. Glancing down at the dirty, dented and scratched blue armour on my own arms, I tried to reconcile the memories of the blood-red Marines with the gold-tinted, blue crest on the Thunderhawk.

  In my vision, the two warriors that charged towards me in amongst the daemonic fury were clad in blue power armour, but I could not tally their image with the golden dragon-serpent that swirled around the blue emblem on the gunship. Something did not feel right.

  Until I have more knowledge about the intentions of these strangers, I will remain in their shadows. Knowledge is power.

  The dark plumes of dissipating smoke that curdled more thinly through the waterless rain were tinged with an ineffable purple, and something in my soul stirred with primordial knowledge as I watched the unusual gases and energies intermixing.

  The vapours touched something in my soul. I knew that I had seen patterns and phenomena like this before, and I knew that they represented something special or rare in the world. The oscillating purple veins seemed to whisper and hiss with esoteric knowledge, and I could feel them tugging at my mind like threads of thought. I know this power; it is mine—it is part of me, just as Vairocanum is part of me. I could taste it on my tongue and in my breath. An unknown spice thickened the air and fragranced it with something intoxicating. It tasted like… power.

  Pressing myself back into the fissure in the rocks, standing on a ledge above a steep drop, out of sight of the landing craft and submerged in the heavy darkness of deep shadow, I stared down at my hands. They were only suggestions in the darkness, dimly lit and almost imperceptible. Normal eyes would have seen nothing at all.

  I am the eyes of the Emperor. The thought rolled over and over in my head, as though generating gravity like a spinning planet. I inhaled deeply, calming my mind and drawing a fine mist of purpling vapour into my throat. Something in my mouth shifted and I could feel my physiology change subtly, but only after my lungs had seemed to lurch into flames and my eyes flashed.

  There was a tiny blue spark. It seemed to flare out of the tip of my index finger. My eyes squinted sharply, but my mind reeled back to calm, as though something inside me had expected the startling event.

  The little flame vanished as soon as it appeared, but I reached over and felt the fingertip with my other hand. An instant later and a sticky thread of blue energy arced across from the fingertip to the back of the other hand, creating a pool of viscous, crackling fluid that quickly grew and spread to cover my entire hand. The submerged skin tingled slightly, but it remained cool and supple. Clasping my hands together, the invigorating energy instantly spread to cover them both, and it started to send shimmering tendrils questing up my arms. I could feel the power pulsing and growing as the light consumed my body; my eyes widened with a sudden realisation and appreciation of my nature. My soul thrilled in the heart of the gathering power and I could feel my eyes begin to flare with energy.

  These are the Emperor’s eyes. The thought fought for prevalence in my mind, forcing out another voice that urged caution and quiet. I could feel a certain mania descending over me, engulfing my senses and teasing me with promises and visions of the future, even as the purpling and noxious cloud started to fill the crevice in the rock. The power flooded out around me, filling the cleft in the rock with a pool of shimmering blue, banishing the darkness and the shadows and rendering the space radiant, like a fragment of heaven.

  But I am not alone with these powers. The memory of the black and purple smoke-enshrouded Thunderhawk jabbed into my mind, intruding on my reverie. Still dizzy from the unexpected and sudden rush of power, for a moment I could not work out whether the thought of a powerful psyker in the Thunderhawk held portents of rivalry or comradeship. Of one new thing I was certain: my world had become a much bigger and more fantastical place over the course of the last few minutes.

  CHAPTER THREE: TALDEER

  The ice-planet of Lorn V spun slowly like a massive comet, pockmarked and scarred by dirty patches of urban decay and huge impact craters. It was an unassuming planet, in many ways little more than a backwater. But the damage that had been stamped onto its surface suggested that its importance was belied by its unremarkable history.

  As the Ravenous Spirit ploughed into the outer reaches of the Lorn system, Captain Gabrie
l Angelos of the Blood Ravens Third Company, the Commander of the Watch, stood on the bloody and fire-damaged control deck and gazed out at the floating debris that littered the sector. Tumbling chunks of splintered asteroids raced past the strike cruiser as it advanced towards the central planets, as though they had been thrown out from the heart of the system by a massive explosion.

  In his mind’s eye, Gabriel could still see the smoking remains of Rahe’s Paradise, upon which he had ordered the Exterminatus shortly before. The rain of ruined rock that clattered against the Spirit’s armoured plating echoed the hail of destruction that had befallen that ill-fated world.

  Intermixed amongst the rubble and the asteroids, Gabriel noticed the crude and cumbersome hulks of ork space vessels. They were little more than massive wrecks even when fully operational, and they floated like gargantuan pieces of refuse, aimless and wretched. Huge holes had been blasted through a number of the craft. Others bore the distinctive imprints of more precise destruction: rows of small puncture wounds around the engine blocks and command decks, or delicate gashes where surgical strikes had excised the essential systems from the vast floating corpses.

  Standing at the captain’s side, the Father Librarian Jonas Ulrelie stared with undiminished awe at the scene. The veteran Librarian had been based at the outpost monastery on Rahe’s Paradise for over four decades before it had been annihilated, and he had not seen destruction on this interstellar scale for even longer. Somewhere in his soul he had hoped that he would meet the end of his days delving into the forgotten history of the Blood Ravens on that isolated, volcanic and desolate world. The slower pace of life had suited him, as the atrophies of old age had started to work their decay on his ambitions as much as on his abilities. It was not a dishonourable posting: the research had been important—more important than he could possibly have imagined—and Rahe’s Paradise had provided a reliable if small stream of recruits for the Chapter. However, over the last few days, Jonas’ world had been exploded, quite literally.

  “These are not just ork wrecks, Gabriel.”

  The captain nodded. He had already seen the broken and twisted forms of damaged Imperial pattern vessels and Furies. Here and there, he even thought that he could make out the distinctive shapes of salvageable Cobra fighter gunships.

  “It seems that the situation in Lorn was more serious than we had imagined,” confessed Gabriel, turning slightly with a smile of resignation on his scarred and tired face. He knew that the Blood Ravens would have been blamed if the Imperium had suffered a loss in this system, and he also knew that any such loss would have been his responsibility. No matter what had happened at Rahe’s Paradise, Gabriel had taken the Ravenous Spirit and most of the surviving Third Company halfway across the galaxy on a blind hunch. Captain Ulantus of the Ninth Company, with whom the Third shared the magnificent battle-barge Litany of Fury, had been right to disapprove of his departure, and a defeat for the Blood Ravens at Lorn would certainly have proven the straight-laced captain’s point.

  “There are eldar ships amongst the detritus, captain. Did you notice?”

  Gabriel shook his head slightly and frowned, fatigue creasing his features. “No, old friend.” He turned back to the large viewing screen that dominated the front wall of the control room. “But it does not surprise me at all. Those devious aliens always seem to be one step ahead of us.”

  Jonas heard the weariness in his battle-brother’s voice and let his own eyes drift off the viewscreen to inspect his comrade’s face. The captain looked tired and exhausted; his normally sparkling blue-green eyes were dull and lifeless, as though there were no soul enlivening them from within. “It is not your fault, Gabriel.” Even to him the words seemed hollow and inadequate.

  The captain breathed the suggestion of a smile, and his eyes squinted with what might have been pain. “Perhaps not, father.” His tone betrayed his thoughts.

  The Librarian hesitated for a moment. Although he was one of the oldest and most experienced Marines in the Blood Ravens, he was no Chaplain and he knew his limitations; he was not sure that he was properly equipped to offer counsel to his friend, even if Gabriel had asked for it… which he hadn’t. The Commander of the Watch had been through more than most could bear, and Jonas was well aware of how heavily he had leaned on Chaplain Prathios for support and guidance over the last few years. On top of everything else that had happened, Gabriel now had to deal with the fact that Prathios was returning from Rahe’s Paradise in a sarcophagus, entombed in the chapel of the Ravenous Spirit. He was not entirely dead, but he would never see normal service again—the best he could hope for would be to serve the Great Father and the Emperor in battle as a dreadnought. He was certainly of no use to Gabriel’s conscience any more.

  In the distance, in a close orbit around the fifth planet of the system, the massive and glorious shape of the Litany of Fury began to appear. It looked like a small, malformed moon cresting the horizon of Lorn V. The radiant, blood-red insignia was emblazoned across the prow and the sides of the hull; the black raven’s wings were spread broadly around the glistening droplet of blood at their centre. It was a sight to warm the hearts of all aboard the Ravenous Spirit. All around the battle-barge, dusty detritus and shards of scrap metal spiralled down into the upper atmosphere of the planet, speckling the world with a rain of fire. It was like a victory salute, or a symphony of welcome.

  “It appears that Captain Ulantus was victorious,” offered Jonas, meaning the observation to console the troubled Commander of the Watch, but conscious that it may have the opposite effect.

  “Yes,” replied Gabriel, his jaw clenched as he stared out towards the magnificent vessel. “Ulantus is an admirable Astartes.”

  Jonas flinched inwardly, conscious of the note of self-reproach that struck through the captain’s words; his attempt at consolation had failed completely. “You did what you had to do, Gabriel. Had you not gone to Rahe’s Paradise, we cannot know what horrors would have been unleashed on the galaxy. You did your duty, just as Ulantus did his.”

  With slow determination, Gabriel turned his face away from the viewscreen, bringing his eyes to meet those of Jonas. For a second, Jonas thought that the captain was not going to say anything, but then his eyes narrowed and flashed with a violent, electric blue: “You will notice, father, that Lorn V continues to revolve around this star, devastated though it may be… The same cannot be said of Rahe’s Paradise.”

  There was poison and violence in Gabriel’s voice; Jonas took an involuntary step away from the captain. He felt the furtive glances and the sudden tension amongst the serfs in the control room. Sergeant Kohath, who had been given command of the strike cruiser for the voyage to Lorn, snapped into alertness at the far side of the command chamber.

  “You did what had to be done, Gabriel,” pressed Jonas calmly. His voice was lowered almost to a whisper. “Ulantus would have done the same, had he been in your shoes.” The veteran Librarian watched the captain carefully, searching for signs that his aggression was fuelled by something other than self-reproach. The fierce blue stare held him like a magnetic field.

  “He was not in my shoes, Jonas,” said Gabriel, finally dropping his shoulders and turning back to the viewscreen. “That is entirely the point.”

  Kohath and Jonas exchanged a concerned look. Neither of them were ignorant of the venerable captain’s recent experiences; both of them had heard the whispered rumours about his state of mind. They shared the awkward moment in silence, turning their attention back to the space graveyard that was scrolling past the main viewscreen. Something caught their eyes almost simultaneously.

  “That’s a Space Marine frigate!”

  “No. But the pattern is close. It looks heavily modified,” corrected Kohath efficiently. He nodded to Loren, one of the command-deck serfs whose name he had taken the trouble to memorise, but the man was already poring over a glowing terminal, checking the vessel’s signature.

  The main viewscreen flickered and changed, bringing up a
magnified image of the side of the frigate. The heraldry was clear and instantly recognisable to everyone aboard the Ravenous Spirit: an emerald green, three-headed hydra. Next to the icon was the many pointed star of Chaos, with the words Hydra Dominatus etched crudely through its heart.

  “The Alpha Legion,” muttered Kohath, giving a gruff voice to the thoughts of the others. “Typical.”

  “Did Ulantus mention anything about the involvement of Alpha Marines?” Jonas turned his question towards Kohath, since Gabriel’s fixed jaw had offered no response to the discovery.

  “No, nothing. But he also failed to mention the Ultramarines…” Kohath’s voice trailed off as he nodded towards the spinning wreckage of the Chaos frigate. The legendary blue sheen of a battle-scarred Ultramarines crest tumbled into view as the vessel rotated. In immaculate, cursive, High Gothic, the name Dominatus Regalis was emblazoned beneath the Chapter icon.

  There was a long silence as the significance of this discovery gradually made itself felt. The three Blood Ravens gazed at the Ultramarines frigate and tried to imagine what could have happened to permit a detachment from the cursed Alpha Legion to board and take over the vessel. It was not inconceivable that the Dominatus had been taken in a previous engagement between the two forces, but the emerald hydra glistened with such brightness that it might just have been painted that day.

  In the back of his mind, the veteran Librarian could vaguely remember reading a secret and forbidden text, buried in the deepest vaults of the great librarium of the Omnis Arcanum, the near-mythical Librarium Sanctorum. It was an Inquisitorial file written by the infamous witch-hunter, Inquisitor Girreaux. As far as Jonas was aware, the copy of the file aboard the venerable fortress monastery was the only copy outside the hallowed halls of the Ordo Hereticus; having such good relations with the Inquisition had a great many benefits.