[Dawn of War 01] - Dawn of War

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

  “Sergeant Ckrius is a fine soldier,” said Mordecai, flicking his head back towards the Razorback.

  “Yes, Tanthius has spoken highly of him,” replied Gabriel without looking round. “But look at his brethren,” he added, casting an arm out to indicate the bodies of the Guardsmen on the mountainside. “They are cowards and traitors, tainted by Chaos.”

  “There are some pure souls on Tartarus, Gabriel,” countered Mordecai. “Not all of them have succumbed. It is a testament to his character that he has remained so resolute.”

  “Perhaps,” said Gabriel, “but we are not here to recruit new Marines, inquisitor.”

  “So many have fallen, captain. You must look to the future—not even the mighty Blood Ravens live forever,” said Mordecai, hesitating as he wondered whether he was overstepping the mark. “Even Cyrene had some souls worth saving,” he added, aware of the ambiguity of his words.

  “And yet we saved none—and some who survived have betrayed the memory of those who should have been saved,” responded Gabriel bitterly, snapping his head round to face Mordecai, his eyes burning with a confusion of pain—Cyrene, Tartarus, and Isador spiralled through his mind. “I know nothing of the soul of this Ckrius—how can I know that he will not crack under the responsibilities of a Blood Raven?”

  “You cannot know, captain. You must have faith,” said Mordecai gently. “Just as Chaplain Prathios once showed such faith in you.”

  Gabriel looked off into the distance, watching the storm gathering on the horizon. Then he nodded, reaching a decision. “Very well, inquisitor—you are right. If the young sergeant survives this day, he will take the Blood Trials. The loss of Isador warrants a new birth in the Blood Ravens.”

  A scout bike came bouncing down the mountainside towards the convoy, followed by two more bikes, struggling to keep pace with their speeding sergeant. The lead biker hit the brakes as he drew alongside the Rhino and slid his back wheel round 180 degrees, spinning it in the dust as he drew level with Gabriel. The sergeant tugged at his helmet, casting it aside, and Gabriel smiled broadly, dropping down to the side-hatch to talk to the veteran sergeant.

  “Corallis! It is good to see you, old friend,” called Gabriel through the wind.

  “Thank you, captain,” he answered, waving his new arm for his friend to see. “The Apothecaries on the Litany of Fury patched me up and packed me off again—it is good to be back, Gabriel.”

  Gabriel just nodded, this was not the time for reunions, and Corallis knew that he was pleased to have him back. “What news?” he said, indicating the area of the mountain from whence Corallis had come.

  “A ruined city lies around to the west. It appears deserted. To the east there is a mob of orks lumbering towards the summit. On the summit are the Alpha Legion and a few eldar—the aliens are badly outgunned, captain. Their numbers are small,” reported Corallis.

  “Lend me your bike, sergeant,” said Gabriel, reaching his hand out to clasp that of Corallis. “I have a feeling that destiny is calling me from that old city—and I don’t want to keep it waiting.”

  In a smooth movement, Gabriel lifted Corallis off the bike and leapt across onto it, taking the sergeant’s place before the bike unbalanced. From the hatch of the Rhino, Corallis looked over at his captain: “I hope that you find him, Gabriel.”

  “He will be waiting, I know it… Keep the Blood Ravens on course—I will see you on the summit,” said Gabriel, revving the bike’s engine into a great growl and spinning the back wheel as he peeled away from the convoy and roared off to the west.

  A cloud of dust kicked up off the ground as Gabriel slid the rear of his bike round, bring it parallel to the ruins of the old city wall and killing the engine. He stood on the bike and then vaulted up onto the crumbling wall. On the other side was a small clearing, strewn with rubble and cracked masonry, some of it overgrown with moss and creeping plants. Once, it must have been a courtyard or a marketplace, but now it was just a mess of stone fragments and wreckage.

  On the far side of the clearing, between two ruined buildings, stood the blue-armoured figure of a Space Marine. His back was turned and his arms were outstretched to the sides, his palms pressed against the walls as though he were holding them up.

  Gabriel saw Isador at once and stood for a moment, motionless on the top of the city walls, staring at the back of this old friend. He had never thought that it would come to this, and his soul rebelled against the very ethical imperative that gave his life direction—perhaps Isador could be an exception?

  No exceptions, Gabriel, came the voice of Isador, slipping into Gabriel’s mind as though whispered lovingly in his ear.

  The Blood Ravens captain vaulted off the wall and crunched down into the old marketplace, landing with one knee touched to the ground and his fist driven into the flagstones, while his other hand rested on the hilt of his chainsword.

  “No exceptions, old friend,” said Gabriel in a whisper that Isador could not have heard.

  As Gabriel rose to his feet, his hand still poised over the hilt on his chainsword, Isador’s feet lifted off the ground. The Librarian rose about a metre off the flagstones, with his arms still stretched out by his sides, and then he started to revolve slowly. After a few seconds, his body faced directly towards Gabriel, but his head was bowed to the floor, hiding his face in shadows.

  You are a fool, Gabriel, came Isador’s thoughts. You were always shortsighted—your mind closed to the very powers that could make you great. I have seen you struggling with yourself. Why struggle, when the power is there just waiting to be released?

  “Because it is wrong, Isador. Because there are some things more important than power,” said Gabriel, stalking slowly towards the levitating figure.

  There was no movement from Isador—he just seemed to hang in the air, as though suspended on an invisible cross. You are wrong, old friend. There is nothing more important than power: how ridiculous that you, a Space Marine, can still believe that power is not the goal of all our efforts. We crave it—and without it we would be nothing more than primitives. Without it, Cyrene would still be a seething pool of mutation and heresy. Power makes us right, Gabriel. And you are wrong—for you and your faith are no match for me.

  “Of all my brothers, why you? You, out of all of us, you were always the strongest,” said Gabriel, taking another cautious step towards the Librarian, his voice rich with emotion.

  That is why, foolish Gabriel. That is why. Can you imagine being forced to serve the weak and the fumbling? Could you be commanded by that nauseating wretch Brom? Strength should command, not some pathetic notion of justice. The thoughts were bitter and dripping with venom, making Gabriel’s mind recoil.

  “You are not yourself, old friend. I have heard these words before—the cursed Warmaster Horus said as much to the Emperor himself as he unleashed bloody civil war on the galaxy. These sentiments would have found no place in the heart of Isador Akios, Librarian of the Blood Ravens,” said Gabriel, reaching his hand to his head in a reflex response to the pain. “These are not the words of my friend.”

  A crack of lightning arced across the sky and thunder crashed as the storm drew closer to the mountain. Isador finally raised his face from the ground and stared at Gabriel, his eyes ablaze with red and golden flames, and his face a ruined mess of cuts, scars and streams of blood. Then I am not your friend.

  The words wracked Gabriel with pain, and he slumped to the ground clutching his head. Isador was weak-willed, but his body is strong. He resisted a little, but I broke him easily. This form will be enough to smite you, captain—an entertainment while I await the coming storm.

  The voice in his head had lost its aura of Isador; it hissed and cackled, burning Gabriel’s mind and licking at it with blades, slicing at his soul to the point of submission. Gabriel writhed on the ground, his body spasming as his mind played cruel tricks on his nervous system.

  I am stronger than you could ever imagine—the daemons and the gods tremble before me, feari
ng my wrath, fearing my power, fearing the coming of the storm.

  Gabriel staggered back to his feet, swaying uneasily and gripping his head in the gauntlet of one hand.

  This could have been you, Gabriel. You showed such promise on Cyrene—slaughtering the innocent with the guilty in one stroke. Such power. Such glory. There was a part of you that thrilled when you ordered the strikes, I know it. Part of you thrilled when you betrayed your own people—because you had the power to do it.

  Roaring with the release of pent-up rage, Gabriel lurched forward towards the husk of Isador. “I betrayed no one!” he cried as his chainsword flashed from its scabbard, spun once in the air, and then plunged deeply into the Librarian’s chest. “Not even you, Isador.”

  The fires in his eyes flared suddenly and his mouth fell open in shock, then Isador fell out of the sky and collapsed to the ground. Immediately, the daemonic whisperings in Gabriel’s head subsided, and he could hear the faint chorus of the Astronomican echoing around his soul once again, giving direction to his faith.

  “Innocents die so that humanity may live, Isador,” said Gabriel, pulling his blade out of his friend’s primary heart, “not because we prove our power by killing them. I ended their suffering and saved their souls—and I will do the same for you… not because I can, but because I must.”

  The Librarian’s eyes flickered back into blue, and he gazed up at his old friend with his own eyes for the last time. “I was wrong, Gabriel,” he coughed, trails of blood seeping out of the corner of his mouth. “I thought that I was strong enough to control it. I thought that I could use its power for the good of the Imperium… you must see that.”

  “I believe you, old friend,” said Gabriel, smiling faintly as he saw the familiar light return to Isador’s eyes. It flickered weakly, on the point of extinction. “That is why I bring you redemption myself.”

  Gabriel dropped his chainsword to the ground and drew his bolt pistol. He knelt for a moment at the side of the dying Librarian, and reached out his gauntleted hand, grasping Isador’s wrist firmly. “Goodbye, Isador. May the Emperor shelter your soul from the storm.”

  Standing slowly, Gabriel fired a single shot from his boltpistol and turned away. He strode to the ruined city wall without looking back, and vaulted over it, landing smoothly on his bike on the other side. Kicking the bike’s engine into life, Gabriel spun the rear wheel and left the old city in the dust.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The convoy of Blood Ravens had ground to a halt several hundred metres short of the summit. The storm had finally reached the mountain, and great sheets of lightning tore into the mountainside, forming a ring of warp energy and fire around the twin peaks. The mountain itself had cracked open along the line of the barrage from the storm, and the dual summits had been torn into the air, floating like impossible islands of rock in the tumult of energised rain. An archipelago of islets, blasted free of the mountain top, were held in impossible suspension all around them.

  Through the purpling curtain of warp lightning, Inquisitor Toth could make out dozens of figures on the two islands, and constant flashes of gunfire. Right on the point of the highest peak, Mordecai could see the silhouette of a Chaos sorcerer in a bladed helmet, his arms held up into the storm as though calling it to him. In his hands burned two red flames.

  The storm washed down the mountainside, rippling out from the sorcerer’s peak and hurling lashes of hail and spikes of lightning through the gale-force winds. The tumult roared through the ring of warp energy and beat against the Blood Ravens as they waited for the order to advance on the summit. Mordecai and Corallis looked out of the roof-hatch of the lead Rhino, surveying the unnatural scene as the lashes of another realm streamed into their faces. Against the roar of the wind, they could not even hear each other speak.

  Corallis stared into the firestorm, his enhanced vision able to pick out individual figures in the kaleidoscope. He narrowed his eyes in disgust as he recognised the shapes of a number of Imperial Guardsmen in the fray, fighting alongside the hulking figures of the Alpha Legionaries. On the second island-summit, lower than the one on which Sindri stood calling to the storm, stood an eldar farseer, her arms upheld to the heavens as though entreating the gods for assistance. Around her was a small, dwindling group of eldar warriors and wraithguard. They were completely outnumbered and outgunned, but they fought with incredible desperation, discipline and grace, as though their very souls depended on it.

  Dropping his eyes from the scene, Corallis shook his head—he had never seen a battlefield like it before. It was as though the forces of nature themselves were at war, and the various races of the galaxy were simply caught in the fray. He looked along the line of the sheet of coruscating energy that stood between the Blood Ravens and the theatre of battle, and saw that the border was strewn with corpses—some human, some eldar, and some hidden in the huge suits of armour of the Alpha Legion. They had clearly fought all the way up the mountainside.

  He turned to look back down the mountain, over the heads of the Blood Ravens and Imperial storm troopers that had spilled out of their transports, realising that the only way onwards would be on foot. Even in the gathering darkness shed by the black clouds of the warp storm, Corallis could see how the route was speckled with death and doused with blood. He did not pretend to understand what was unfolding here, but he knew that it had to be stopped.

  Cresting a rise to the west, Corallis saw a burst of red in a cloud of dust. Flashes of lightning reflected brilliantly off the speeding form, making it flash like a beacon. The sergeant gripped Mordecai’s shoulder and spun the inquisitor round so that he could see, nodding his head towards the approaching rider. Mordecai squinted his eyes against the wind and rain, but then a crack of lightning lit the mountainside and Gabriel’s assault bike shone in the sudden light as he roared across the slope towards the Blood Ravens.

  Mordecai nodded firmly to Corallis, but the sergeant was still staring out across the mountain. There was something else over there. As Gabriel drew closer, a great cloud of dust began to emerge over the rise behind him. After a couple of seconds, the cloud of dust turned into a line of ork warbikes, bouncing and roaring in pursuit of the captain. And in the wake of the warbikes came a clutch of wartrukks, battlewagons and the rumbling forms of looted Imperial Chimera transports.

  “Orks!” yelled Corallis into his armour’s vox unit. “Orks approaching from the west.”

  Mordecai snapped his head back towards the speeding figure of Gabriel, who was already within range of the small vox units built into the Blood Ravens’ armour. The ramshackle line of orks behind him was clearly in view now.

  “Ordnance!” came the crackling voice of Gabriel, as his bike bumped and skidded over the increasingly wet ground.

  The turrets of the Predators and Whirlwinds rotated smoothly to the west, and a flurry, of fire erupted from the tanks in the Blood Ravens’ convoy, their shells flashing through the air over Gabriel’s head. A series of explosions detonated on the mountainside as the rockets and shells punched into the ork line, toppling a gaggle of warbikes and dropping a battlewagon into a sudden crater.

  At the same time, Tanthius’ Land Raider streaked through the driving hail towards the orks, passing Gabriel’s bike on its way. Behind it growled one of the Rhinos being used by the storm troopers. Tanthius and Ckrius, standing against the elements in the open hatch in the side of the Land Raider, snapped a crisp salute to Gabriel as they roared past, the vehicle’s gun turret lancing parallel streams from its twin-lascannons as it went.

  As he reached the rest of the Blood Ravens, Gabriel hit the brakes hard, skidding the bike over the sodden ground and stopping perilously close to the lead Rhino. He vaulted from the bike, straight into the side-hatch of the transport, greeting Corallis and Mordecai with abrupt nods. The rain and wind whipped them.

  “We cannot approach the summits, captain,” explained Corallis through the vox-channel. “The storm hobbles the systems in our vehicles, and… well,
the mountain top is unsound, as you can see.”

  Gabriel stared forward into the curtain of warp energy for the first time, his mind racing with questions that had no answers. The scene on the other side was simply impossible—with islands of rock floating amidst floods of fire, wracked with bolts of purple lightning and lashed by torrents of rain and hail. The Alpha Legionaries and a knot of damned Imperial Guardsmen were assaulting a sub-summit, held by the eldar witch that had saved Gabriel’s life in Lloovre Marr. She was a blaze of blue fire, but her forces were dwindling. And there was Sindri, standing on his own on the top of the highest island, calling to the daemons of the warp, the Maledictum in one hand and the curved dagger in the other.

  “We have little time left, Gabriel. The sorcerer must have released the daemon,” said Mordecai, clearly relieved that Gabriel had returned to lead the Space Marines.

  “Our course is clear,” said Gabriel resolutely, making his decision instantly. “We must destroy this Chaos sorcerer and his lackeys… and we must attend to the daemon before it is too late—it will not find our souls as weak as it has those of others,” he added, Isador’s face flickering behind his eyes.

  “What about the eldar, captain?” asked Corallis, unsure about how to approach the aliens.

  “This is a desperate hour, sergeant, and the eldar risk their already meagre forces to confront the evil on Tartarus. They are our allies, at least for today,” replied Gabriel with only a hint of hesitation, speaking such heretical words in front of an inquisitor of the Emperor. But Mordecai simply nodded his agreement, and Corallis leapt out of the Rhino to disseminate the orders.