[Dawn of War 03] - Tempest

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

  Jonas himself had taught a number of young Librarians that the pearl of pure psychic energy in the Sanctorium Arcanum was linked in some way to the Emperor’s silver choir: the Blood Ravens had been entrusted with a sacred and unique mission to spread the pristine symphony of the Astronomican throughout the farthest reaches of the uncharted galaxy.

  During his time of contemplation and research on Rahe’s Paradise, Jonas had begun to realise that this explanation was probably unfounded. In a long and heated debate with Sister Senioris Meritia, of the Order of the Lost Rosetta, Jonas had realised that the effectiveness of the Astronomican rested on the fact that it was absolutely stationary—or rather that its position marked the absolute point of the centre of the Imperium at any one time. The Astronomican called out to all the souls of the Emperor’s chosen, guiding them back into the sight of the Emperor himself. If the Beacon Psykana was really a booster for this signal, then its constant and relentless perambulations around the galaxy would destroy the purpose of the Astronomican completely.

  Nevertheless, it remained true that Vidya had sealed a number of unusual and highly privileged contracts with the Adeptus Telepathica in order to maintain the beacon. Whatever it was, it was obviously something that the very highest authorities on Terra itself wanted to see maintained.

  One theory that Jonas still found plausible was that Vidya had designed the Beacon Psykana to provide a light for the lost Fifth Company—the so-called “Fated”—who vanished into the Maelstrom three thousand years before. However, the Fifth Company had been lost nearly a thousand years after the death of Vidya. Any such purpose for the beacon would therefore require a foresight so immense that it seemed unlikely that even a great Librarian of the immense learning and power of Vidya could have planned for it. Unlikely and impossible are allied, but they are not identical.

  Like so many things that Jonas had encountered in his long and honourable career, he had to confess that the truth of the Beacon Psykana had probably been lost to the Blood Ravens long ago. Perhaps the Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica on Terra would remember its real purpose, but Jonas suspected that even he simply placed his faith in the ongoing echoes of historical brilliance: in the end, historical scholarship was about repeating and maintaining the practices of the past, and the Beacon Psykana was exactly one such practice.

  In the absence of certain knowledge about its real purpose, everyone worked to maintain it as though it were of essential and vital importance for the Chapter and the Imperium. Meanwhile, the Librarians of the Blood Ravens concocted numerous hypotheses about its value and function. It was another disadvantage of a scholarly nature that Jonas and the Blood Ravens more generally found it harder to accept conventions on faith than just about any of the other Chapters. During the epic battle of Geadion Secondus, in which the Blood Ravens and Black Templars had repelled a massive force of Thousand Sons Chaos Marines, Jonas had been amazed and repulsed by the mindless, unquestioning and simple way in which his allies had embraced the Imperial dogma. He had nearly come to blows with the Templar Chaplain Broec when Broec had accused him of heresy with his persistent questions and doubts. The self-righteous and unreflective chaplain had gone so far as to accuse Jonas of being little better than one of the Thousand Sons themselves, searching for arcane knowledge with no respect for the higher callings of faith or belief.

  “Father Urelie.” The familiar voice made Jonas look up towards the elevated apse on the other side of the altar. “You are most welcome here, once again.” It was Korinth. The Librarian, who had once been a student of Jonas, was standing on the apse in support of the choir for the ceremony of the Summoning of Exodus. Jonas recognised the positions immediately; he had conducted this ritual himself many times. Too many times, he reflected.

  Korinth was not alone. A second Librarian stood next to him, deep in contemplation and reverence, long grey hair cascading over his shoulders. Jonas did not recognise him, but presumed that he was Yupres Zhaphel, one of the most recent additions to the cadre of the Orders Psykana. Despite his youth, his reputation was already formidable. Jonas had heard the rumours of the unusual force-axe that Zhaphel used in combat—it was said that he had recovered it from a research expedition on the planet of Dorian Prime, a world that had been lost for millennia behind the veil of a vast warp storm and whose residents, once normal human citizens of the Imperium, had become stunted and malformed by the bizarre gravitational effects of the storm. Their metalwork was beyond compare in the known galaxy, but the planet had been lost to the warp once again before their resources could be properly exploited by the Blood Ravens.

  “Librarians Korinth and Zhaphel,” nodded Jonas, greeting them as old friends in the intimate manner appropriate to fellow initiates into the Order Psykana. The veteran Librarian made his way around the ambulatories, circumventing the silvering pearl of energy in the heart of the chamber, and climbed the polished stairs up to the apse, where he bowed briefly to the Librarians. “The Summoning of the Exodus does you both honour,” he said, startled slightly by the mismatched eyes of Korinth, one ruby red and the other black as pitch; every time he looked into them, it was like the first time. “It demonstrates your regard for your battle-brothers.” In the back of his mind, Jonas wondered whether this was the only value of the ceremony and whether it was in fact all that Vidya had in mind when he instigated it.

  “It honours neither of us,” replied Korinth, returning the bow. “The honour belongs to Librarian Rhamah, who was lost defending our heritage. The ceremony is for him, not for us.”

  Jonas nodded in acknowledgement; that was a suitable response. “How did he fall, brothers?”

  “During the warp jump into the Lorn system, the Litany was assailed by daemons. Somehow they breached our Geller field and penetrated the hull. Rhamah fell defending the Implantation Chamber and our gene-seed. It is to him that our survival is owed.” Korinth’s report moved from pride to hesitancy.

  Jonas nodded solemnly, showing his appreciation of the deed of Rhamah. “You have reason to believe that he can hear the Rites of Summoning?” As he asked, the father Librarian looked down towards the altar and saw the sword fragment that lay on it, glowing an eerie shade of green. “Is that all that remains of him?” It was certainly unusual to have so little, and to be left with something that seemed so alien.

  “The manner of his fall was… singular,” replied Korinth carefully, studying the features of his former teacher. “We believe that he is lost, but not that he is dead.”

  Jonas raised an eyebrow and turned back to Korinth.

  “At the moment of greatest peril, Rhamah plunged his blade into the fabric of space and tore it asunder, opening a breach into the warp through which he fell, dragging the thirsting tendrils of daemons with him. When the tear sealed itself behind him, the daemons had vanished and that blade fragment was all that was left of our brother.”

  Jonas gazed evenly at his one-time student. “As you say, his fall was indeed singular. Let us place our faith in the Great Father that his soul can still hear the call of our beacon.”

  Darkness crowded the Apothecarion, drawing in around the beds like heavy curtains of privacy, leaving the wounded and the sick to suffer without humiliation. Whenever Medicius and his staff of specialist servitors were not busy at work, the lights were dimmed to the point of darkness for the sanity and recuperation of the patients. Rest was not something that came easily to Blood Ravens, whose ability to sleep was thwarted by a defect in their catalepsean node. Hence, peace and darkness was as much as they could hope for, even whilst recovering from injury. Gabriel picked his way between the beds carefully and silently, trying not to alert anyone to his presence, and doing his best to avoid the motion sensors that would trigger the glow-globes in the low ceiling. Despite the darkness, Gabriel’s well-honed eyes could make out nearly everything in the expansive room, and he recognised many of the faces in the beds that he passed. So many Blood Ravens had been injured in the battle of Lorn. None of them were sleep
ing, but most had closed their eyes. Even so, Gabriel could see their reactions twitching as their sensitive ears detected his motion in the room—they would assume that he was Medicius.

  A few of the open eyes were startled when they saw who it was that was creeping in between them; none had expected to see the Commander of the Watch slipping so stealthily through his own ship. One or two attempted to climb out of their beds to stand to attention, but Gabriel calmed them, pressing his hand to their shoulders and making them lie down again. This was not the time for such ceremony.

  Gabriel!

  The thought was like a shout in the dark, but Gabriel knew that he was the only one who could hear it. He found the eldar witch’s bed and crouched down next to her pillow. She was writhing in pain and sweat, only half covered by the blood-soaked sheets that had been twisted and wrung with moisture. Casting his eyes over the suffering body, Gabriel realised that she was not receiving the level of care that he would have expected from Medicius; she lay neglected and pain-wracked, and the apothecary was clearly waiting for her to die.

  “I am sorry for your pain,” whispered Gabriel, although he understood why Medicius would not waste his time or resources on an alien, especially when so many battle-brothers required his attention. It was a minor miracle that the eldar had not simply been killed when she was discovered. His name had saved her.

  Gabriel! You are here. Macha was right. You are here. Macha. Gabriel. They are coming. They are rising. They were here. They are gone. Defeat. Victory. The beginning and the end…

  The seer was delirious and feverish. Her head was snapping back and forth, and her eyes were wild as though stricken with panic. Gabriel reached over and took her jaw in his hand, guiding her face around to meet his own.

  “I am here, eldar,” he whispered. “What can you tell me?”

  The old enemy. They return—the cry of the banshee is heard.

  “We have heard it too, eldar,” muttered Gabriel, recalling that phrase from the ancient tablet on Rahe’s Paradise. It foreshadowed the appearance of the necron there, but victory had belonged to the Blood Ravens and the Biel-Tan eldar under the guidance of the troublesome Farseer Macha. “But the threat has been defeated.”

  Perhaps, but we must be certain. The portal may yet have been destroyed.

  “Portal?” Gabriel realised that they were talking on cross-purposes. “There was no portal at Rahe’s Paradise.”

  The portal is here, human. Lorn houses a gateway to the ancient webway, an access point to Arcadia, the planet of law. The Yngir seek to close all such doorways, to cut off the Sons of Asuryan from our roots and our power; only then can they complete their terrible purpose and bring darkness perpetual.

  “The necron were here for your portal, eldar?”

  Yes, but does it survive? So many died. So much blood has been spilled. So many waystones have been lost too, into the mire of sha’iel. But does it survive?

  “The necron are gone. Your battle was won.”

  The Yngir cannot die, human. They can be merely confined. Our battle is lost if the portal is gone. All that death for nothing. Without it and the others, the balance of the galaxy will shift, and the Yngir will return. Macha knew this too—she should have been here. Why could she not see this? Ash-ruulnah—the blindness of sight.

  “We know nothing of your portal, eldar.”

  You must take me down to the surface of Lorn. There we will verify the condition of the Arcadian Gate.

  Gabriel stared into the twitching and shifting eyes of the bloody and sweating eldar seer. She lacked focus, and he feared for the condition of her alien mind. Were she a human, he would dismiss her words as the rantings of the insane. But she was no human, and his experiences with the eldar had already taught him the folly of treating them as people. Macha, the farseer from Tartarus and Rahe’s Paradise, had revealed much about the eldar of Biel-Tan, and Gabriel knew better than to ignore their warnings now. Ulantus would not understand, but Gabriel would do as this alien desired.

  “Who are you, eldar?”

  I am Taldeer—servant of Biel-Tan, of the court of the farseer.

  CHAPTER FIVE: SOLITAIRE

  Tumbling through the freezing vacuum of deep space, the Wraithship Eternal Star spiralled and twisted out of control. Energy bled from a terrible wound that had been punched into its hull, hissing out into the void and spinning the vessel even more violently. The characteristic, ethereal sheen of the Wraithship fluctuated and oscillated, as though its life-force was ebbing away in the uncontrolled turmoil of the fall. Its massive star wings fluttered and twitched, like those of a dying bird, but they could not restore stability to the tumbling ship. Deep within the heart of the ship, the injured and bleeding Farseer Macha sat in meditation, trying to restore order to her racing thoughts and to her errant ship.

  Flashing along in its wake sped the sleek and dark form of the Ghost Dragon, Avenging Sword. The Biel-Tan Exarch of the Dire Avengers Aspect Temple, Uldreth, stood silently on the control deck of the cruiser, willing it to greater speeds in pursuit of his farseer. As his eyes flared with emerald fires, his mind eddied and gyred through a confusion of emotions.

  Watching the tumbling, uncontrolled flight of the Eternal Star ahead of him, Uldreth could not suppress the feeling that it was all his fault. In the back of his mind he could hear the gloating voice of the old Fire Dragon Exarch, Draconir, taunting him with accusations.

  Uldreth could not deny the words that he had spat with such venom into the midst of the Court of the Young King, back on Biel-Tan before all this had begun. He had challenged the court, insulting the older, slower and more pedestrian exarchs. Draconir had warned him then, but he had not listened; the passion of his youth and the arrogance of his aspect had blinded him to the wisdom of the old dragon. And there had also been something else: if Uldreth were honest with himself, he knew that his anxiety about catching the Wraithship contained more than simple concern for the farseer of Biel-Tan—there was a personal investment in Macha that he refused to acknowledge but that fed oil into the fires of his soul.

  Had this infernal affair involved anyone other than Macha, Uldreth might well have listened to reason. The realisation filled him with resentment and self-loathing, and he toyed instinctively with calling off the chase and letting the Eternal Star tumble into oblivion.

  His own words haunted his memory. He had stood in the Court of the Young King on Biel-Tan and told the other exarchs that he did not believe in Macha. He had swung their views away from her and forced them to embrace the visions of lesser seers. Instead of sending support with the senior farseer to Lsathranil’s Shield—the cursed planet that the mon-keigh called Rahe’s Paradise—he had twisted their wills, and the Swordwind army had been dispatched with Taldeer to Lorn. The young seer Taldeer had seen an ork invasion of that once-majestic exodite world; she had requested that the Bahzhakhain be dispatched to repel this terrible insult to the heritage of the Sons of Asuryan.

  Uldreth had laughed at the choice. He had laughed, stating that there was no choice to make: the threat to Lorn was substantive and real; Macha’s visions of Lsathranil’s Shield were vague and formless. He had scoffed about the role of the Seer Council on Biel-Tan, provoking the exarchs with challenges to their identity as warriors: We do not need the anachronism of the seer council—we are warriors, for Khaine’s sake!

  He had been so certain that Macha was wrong—or, at least, he had been so determined to prove her wrong—that he had voiced a test. He had challenged her and the Court of the Young King together, removing all hope of a real choice and trapping them into the wrong course. “Let us devise a test,” he had said, thinking to humble Macha once and for all. He had protested that the actions of the Court should make no difference to the patterns of the future if the visions of Farseer Macha were really as potent and formidable as Draconir and the others seemed to claim.

  He had railed that there should be no need to act on her insight, since the battle that she had seen raging in the
murky and mysterious future of Lsathranil’s Shield should happen whether or not the Court of the Young King decided to send army to fight it; otherwise her vision was little more than an impotent and fanciful daydream. Hence, Uldreth had ordered the Bahzhakhain—the Swordwind of Biel-Tan—to follow Taldeer to Lorn, leaving Macha to set sail for Lsathranil’s Shield with only the support of that cursed and damned Dark Reaper, Laeresh. “I propose that we decide to ignore Macha’s vision,” he had said, filled with vitriol. “If we end up fighting for Lsathranil’s Shield anyway, thenceforth I will bow to your greater wisdom, Draconir of the Fire Dragons.”

  And there had been such a fight for Lsathranil’s Shield; even the long-lost eldar gods of old would have gloried in the confrontation with the ancient foe. Uldreth’s test had riddled his own soul with guilt and failure: Macha had been right after all. If he ever made it back to Biel-Tan, Uldreth would have to concede that Draconir, the old Fire Dragon exarch, had been right to place his faith in the archaic institution of the farseer.

  Uldreth Avenger—I know that you can hear me.

  The thoughts pushed easily into his head, breaking him out of his self-indulgence.

  Farseer! His mind raced with intense emotions of relief and anxiety. Although Macha was ensconced in the glittering Eternal Star, which tumbled and spun through the void ahead of Uldreth’s Avenging Sword, he recognised her thoughts and his soul leapt at their touch.

  Uldreth, the blame is not yours. She had known the Dire Avenger for longer than most could remember, and she knew what would be in his mind. The future is a roiling intermixture of pathways and possibilities, and this one opened more inevitably the further down it we progressed. Your decisions did not make this worse, they just made it into what it was. Even without your choices, the future will unfold; you cannot escape from time. Without you, the Swordwind may have descended on Lsathranil’s Shield… but I may have spun off into oblivion forever. Besides, even without the Bahzhakhain the victory was ours: your choices brought you here, and the Yngir were defeated in this system.