“As are we all,” intoned Ulantus, nodding with understanding. He was not unaware of the controversial deeds of the Commander of the Watch, and he could only imagine the inner turmoil that such things could cause. If ever a Space Marine was in need of a chaplain, it was Gabriel.
“So, you hear nothing?”
“I hear the echoes of my soul, and that is enough guidance for the pure of heart.” Ulantus’ answer was crisp and perfect. He might have been reading from one of Prathios’ own sermons. “For my soul is bathed in the light of the Emperor, and through it I hear his words as though they were my own.”
“You always know what is right, Ulantus? Is the will of the Emperor and the Great Father always so clear, so unambiguous to you?”
“Yes, Gabriel. Always.”
“Are there no other voices?” Gabriel stared intensely into Ulantus’ eyes as he asked the question, transforming it into a challenge or a plea.
“No. There are no other voices,” answered Ulantus with level calm, meeting Gabriel’s challenge without flinching.
Nodding with a forlorn silence, Gabriel turned his attention back to the altar. “That is as it should be, captain,” he muttered almost inaudibly. “Now, tell me of the battle of Lorn.”
“As you wish, captain,” replied Ulantus, shaking his head slightly as though to clear it and pulling himself to attention. “Shortly after dispatching the Rage of Erudition to inform you of the situation, the Litany entered the Lorn system. It was immediately clear that the fifth planet was besieged by the greenskins. A force from the Imperial Navy was engaging its orbital fleet, and Imperial Guard Commander Sturnn reported that that ground battle was turning a corner. It seems that we were not the first of the Adeptus Astartes to reach the scene, captain.
“Of course, the Litany laid in a course for Lorn V to provide assistance. Before we could clear Lorn VII, however, we were caught by a fleet of eldar fighters. They engaged us at range and prevented us from closing on the planet. It seems that they were concerned that we should not reach Lorn V.”
“Did they attempt to communicate with you?”
“No captain, they simply opened fire.”
“Continue.”
“As suddenly as they had appeared, the eldar fleet disengaged. At the same time, a report came from Commander Sturnn that the greenskins had been routed and that the battle was won. It seems that the Imperial Guard had recovered a Dominatus-class titan—a rare and almost unknown class of titan—and a squad of Ultramarines under the command of Chaplain Varnus had air-dropped a crew for it. The titan had fallen centuries before in defence of the capital city of Talorn. As you might imagine, the titan changed the tide of the battle.”
“I see,” said Gabriel, rocking back on his heels and standing to his feet. “Your account leaves a number of questions unanswered, captain. In particular, I should ask about the eldar farseer in the Apothecarion. I would also like to know about the involvement of the forces of Chaos—we identified a number of Chaos wrecks in the outer reaches of the Lorn system.”
“With due respect, Captain Angelos, my report is not yet finished. We do not yet know the reason or extent of the involvement of the Chaos forces. Intelligence suggests that the Alpha Legion were active on the planet’s surface, but little has been confirmed.
“At the instant that Sturnn’s report came in, we identified a new threat emerging from the dark side of the planet. The eldar fleet engaged it immediately, without hesitation. On the planet’s surface, Sturnn reported that a new enemy was decimating his positions. After a few moments, we identified the new assailants as…” Ulantus hesitated, as though afraid that his words might not be believed. “They were necron, captain.”
“And you fought them in co-operation with the eldar fleet?”
“Yes, captain. It seemed the only way.”
“Indeed, it probably was the only way to ensure victory.”
“You don’t seem surprised to hear this news, Gabriel.”
“We also met the necron menace at Rahe’s Paradise. I am not surprised to hear that you have encountered them, but I am concerned to hear that the Blood Ravens have now fought them twice, simultaneously on opposite sides of the galaxy and in alliance with the Biel-Tan eldar. In what circumstances did the farseer gain access to the Litany?”
Gabriel’s thoughts raced back to the image of Farseer Macha, the eldar witch-queen with whom he had unearthed the necron on Rahe’s Paradise. He wondered whether she had anything to do with this. Despite the distance and the impossibility of the timing, he would not be surprised to hear that she was here.
“The space battle was fierce, and the eldar fought with an intensity and passion that even we could not match. The necron were destroyed, but the cost was great: nearly every eldar vessel in the fleet was destroyed. Just at the point of the destruction of the flagship, the eldar farseer somehow transported aboard the Litany. Since then, she has done nothing but ask for you.”
“You have not yet been down to the surface of the planet?”
“No, captain. There has not yet been the time or the need.”
“Did Sturnn report any archeological activity?”
“He has made no such report, but we understand that he has been in communication with the Ordo Xenos in this sector. Why do you ask?
“On Rahe’s Paradise, Father Jonas stumbled across a necron tomb under the outpost monastery as he was excavating. The eldar intervened in an attempt to prevent the ascension of their ancient enemies.”
“It appears that they did not succeed, captain.”
“Indeed not. However, I wonder whether something similar was happening here.”
“Perhaps, but the coincidences would be too staggering. We are scholars, Gabriel, and this sounds like sloppy thinking. We must research the possible connections between Rahe’s Paradise and Lorn…” Ulantus let the thought slide; the most obvious connection between them was standing directly in front of him. “Besides,” he added, “your explanation would suggest that the affair was over now that the necron had been defeated. Why then would the farseer have boarded our vessel, and why would she be calling for you? There must be some other explanation.”
The Phantom Raptor’s engines lay dormant as the heavily modified Nova-class frigate floated in the massive, sleek shadow of the eldar Dragonship. The dirty, las-scarred and impact-pocked vessel drifted freely, almost indistinguishable from a huge chunk of space debris in the vast space graveyard of the Lorn system.
Only on very close inspection did it become clear that the dirt, grime and damage that seemed to coat the vessel were actually intricate and winding litanies, etched into the armoured plates in ancient and near-unintelligible runes. Deep blue and golden fins and flaps extended from the hull, breaking up the outline and signature of the vessel, designed to frustrate the sensor-arrays of the false Emperor’s space cruisers.
A dull psychic field shimmered around the hull, masking the psychic resonance of the once-human forms within; the entire ship was effectively a warp-blank, all but invisible to psykers. The only deliberately distinguishing features of the vessel were the perfect, circular ocean-blue crests that sported a golden dragon-serpent chasing its own tail; there were three of them spaced around the hull. No attempt had been made to hide or obscure the icons. Indeed, they appeared to be the only parts of the hull that had been recently cleaned and properly repaired.
The space around the Phantom Raptor seemed to shiver, as though repulsed by its presence. Icy threads of burning warp energy danced imperceptibly through the muggy vacuum of real space, questing for a touch from the ancient and potent vessel. Something was being drawn out of the immaterium towards the powers that curdled and roiled in the hidden chambers within the frigate. It was causing the fabric of space around it to buckle and twist, like the clashing of tectonic plates beginning to push up ranges of invisible mountains.
Enshrined in the Cyclopean Hall of Sorcery, hidden in the depths of the Phantom Raptor, the mightiest of sorcerers, Ahr
iman the Unchanging, held his hands out to the stars and beseeched them to fall into the chamber. Power crackled between his outstretched arms, filling the profound darkness of the spherical chamber with an eerie invasion of purpling light. Ahriman himself floated, cruciform, in the centre of the sphere, with energy coursing from his limbs and spiralling around him in the darkness, holding him in the epicentre of the psychically conductive space. All around him, the Cyclopean Hall seemed to open out to the heavens: although the chamber was constructed at the very heart of the Phantom Raptor, protected behind dozens of metres of armoured plating and hidden within a labyrinth of spiralling corridors that swept around it in ever decreasing circles, it was as though there were no walls at all.
The stars glittered directly into the Great Cyclopean Eye as Ahriman revolved slowly in its centre. It was as though he were suspended directly in space, the Phantom Raptor little more than a ghost around him, merely a psychological comfort. He could see the wreck of the eldar Dragonship looming massively, dominating the view from one side of the chamber but somehow within it. Beyond it, despite being blocked by the form of the alien vessel and out of sight, the sorcerer could see the shape of an Astartes cruiser, emblazoned with a blood-red raven.
He knew that they could not see him—he was a phantom in the darkness, at one with the tempest of warp and space that roiled around him, just beyond visibility. He knew that the arrogant Space Marines would think the Phantom was little more than another chunk of space junk—they had neither the wit nor the intellect to understand or recognise his presence, let alone his scheme. Like the Emperor himself, all those millennia ago, his intellectually-stunted, retarded Marines knew nothing of the true power of the warp.
Ahriman’s eyes widened and burned. Flames of warpfire flickered and lapped from his eyelashes before streams of energy burst out of his eyes and mouth. The thickening, lashing tendrils of fiery power quested and thrashed like high voltage cables in a storm. They latched onto a shape in the unseen dimensions of the immaterium, grasping it and crackling around its form, digging roots into it like daemonic maggots into pallid flesh.
The effort of the sorcery tore at Ahriman’s soul, searing his mind with symphonies of agony. He roared with terrible ecstasy, letting the pain fill him, ripping gashes into his very being and riddling him with the daemonic substance of the warp itself; he was becoming one with the immaterium. At the edge of hearing, he could just discern the dull, rhythmic chanting of his cabal of sorcerers, who knelt in a deferential and dedicated ring around the hall, invisible in all but voice to Ahriman in its heart. Their voices swirled and congealed, stirring through the Eye like a wisp of colour in an iris, giving strength and stamina to the master sorcerer as he fought with the currents of the warp. He could see the galaxy shift around him as the stars started to spiral in towards the Cyclopean Hall—the Great Eye of Ahriman.
His tendrils of warp energy were now firmly secured around their target, and Ahriman wailed with effort as he dragged the edifice through the immaterium, tugging and yanking and hauling it towards the material realm. He could feel its resistance to his power. The eldar had rooted it with artistic precision, and he strained against its incongruous solidity in the immaterial environment. It felt like a burning poker in his hands, and he could feel the outpouring of power from his body begin to singe and blister his skin.
Beyond visibility, daemonic creatures started to swim and writhe, responding to the sorcerer’s whispered prayers, promises, and threats. They descended on the ancient eldar aberration, tearing at it with unreal claws and pummelling it with their feral forms. The realms were merging around him, even as he floated and revolved, imperial and impervious, untouched and majestic in the Cyclopean Eye.
All at once, the chorus from the cabal soared to new heights and Ahriman thundered his defiance, throwing the last reserves of the culminated power of the Prodigal Sons through the rupturing interface between the realms. The daemonic beasts of the warp brayed in symphony, conjoining with the supreme effort of the master sorcerer. In the fury, Ahriman felt the webway portal give way, twisting around under the pressured onslaught, and he roared with the very last of his strength, bringing the portal closer and closer through the immaterium until he could see it flickering on the edge of reality just beyond the prow of the Phantom Raptor.
Consciousness started to ebb from Ahriman’s mind. He could feel his grip on the arcane, alien structure beginning to slip. But he held it fast, supporting its ethereal weight on the shoulders of millennia of research, scholarship, wisdom and sorcerous power. He gasped the last words of ancient and agonising incantations, bringing the daemonic host to a final level of frenzied devotion. He grasped the eldar structure with his unbreakable, disciplined will, and anchored it for a fraction of a moment with the gravity of his overburdened and dark soul. He had waited for this for too long. He had searched for centuries for this chance. Nothing, not the eldar, not the necron, and certainly not the stunted Adeptus Astartes, would take it away from him.
As his eyes flared and his mouth poured rivers of cacophonous power into the unreal space of the Cyclopean Eye, he felt the Phantom’s engine come on line. In his mind, he could see the flowing lines of the sensor arrays from the Astartes cruiser flash round to scan the sudden energy source. But then the Phantom’s engines fired and roared, and it lurched forward into the flickering, shimmering webway portal that Ahriman held open with the raw power of his will, supported by the teeming daemonic host that pleaded for his touch. As the frigate plunged through the rupture in the material realm, it seemed to explode in all directions at once, and Ahriman watched the show like a spectral shower, grinning in the heart of his own Great Eye.
The youth was almost unrecognisable from the energetic and overconfident Guardsman that Tanthius had met on Tartarus. His eyes had lost the glistening sheen that had characterised his desperate fight for survival against the greenskins on his homeworld. Tanthius smiled as he recalled the way that the impetuous and foolhardy boy had dropped down off the roof of a tank onto the back of an ork, determined to drive his pathetic knife into the brute’s neck. Such passion. Such courage. He had seen the glint in Ckrius’ eyes even then, but now it was gone. Instead, those eyes sparkled with a deeply buried suffering; he was old before his time. His body, once strong and fit like the best of young men, was now scarred and broken, run through with implants and augmentations. A web of tubes and wires was punched into his abdomen, limbs and head, pumping him full of chemicals and toxins, some designed to enhance his development, others designed to test his defences against poisons. He could die at any time, and he probably wanted to. Without the hypno-conditioning that was pouring constantly into his mind, his brain would have given up the fight ages before. Meanwhile, his muscle bulk had grown beyond normal proportions, but the growth was not yet even, so he appeared malformed like a mutant or freak.
His transformation was happening very fast, which heightened the risks of mutation and implant-rejection. Uneven muscle development was the least of Ckrius’ worries.
As Tanthius watched in silence, the apothecary carefully cauterised the wound that he had opened up under Ckrius’ jaw, where the little neuroglottis had been implanted. Thinking that the neophyte was making good progress, Medicius had decided to introduce the poison-detector at the same time as the oolitic kidney, since the two organs worked in combination and inserting them together made it less likely that they would reject each other later on.
Nonetheless, making two implants at the same time was unusual, particularly at such an advanced stage of the neophyte’s transformation. It was even more than usually traumatic for the patient. In the early stages, organs such as the ossmodula and biscopea implants were sometimes introduced at the same time as the secondary heart, but such a process was as much a test of the resilience of the neophyte as a surgical necessity.
At the start of the process, the apothecary just needed to know whether the aspirant had the constitution to see it through. Towards the end, howev
er, a new tenderness and compassion entered Medicius’ manner: not only had he caused and witnessed the incredible suffering of the neophyte, and hence had developed a measure of compassion for the youth, but also the loss of an aspirant Space Marine at this late stage of the process would be costly both in terms of resources and time. It took time to grow the implants. It took skill and effort to implant them. Very soon, the progenoids themselves would be implanted; this was no longer a time for needless waste.
Medicius checked the wound one last time and then, satisfied that it had healed already, he turned and left the Implantation Chamber, leaving Tanthius alone with the semi-conscious Ckrius.
“Do you wish you were dead?” Tanthius’ voice was low and gravelly. He whispered in through the ceremonial, noxious gases that wafted around the chamber, letting his words reach Ckrius without shocking him. But even from the edge of the chamber, the Terminator sergeant could see the neophyte’s eyes widen at the sound of his voice. This was probably the first time that anyone had addressed him directly since he was first strapped to that tablet. Since that fateful day, when Tanthius had deposited him on the Litany of Fury as the rubble of Tartarus hailed against its massive hull, Ckrius had merely been an experimental body, little more than a slab of meat.
Taking a couple of steps closer to the tablet, Tanthius repeated himself. “Ckrius, do you wish you were dead?”
That was his name. He remembered it now. They had called him Ckrius once, before it had all begun. Would they call him that again, once it was all over—if it was ever all over?
“I know you can hear me, son. I remember the voice that I heard when I was strapped down on that tablet. It is a voice that I will never forget, though it is now forever silenced… forever only in my memory.”
“I… I can hear you.” The voice rasped, like glass being dragged through sand. “When will it… end?”
[Dawn of War 03] - Tempest Page 7