by Various
‘It is the sign of the Black Leviathan,’ said Seanoa. ‘The Leviathan is among us on Briseis. Some have asked why the fates brought us into the battle for Agrellan, onto this planet. Now we have our answer.’
The Jade Dragons kept their secrets. Some, from themselves.
They spoke to no one of their home world. Perhaps the planet, with the recruiting population and fortress-monastery, was abandoned, the Chapter’s banners still hanging from its deserted battlements. Perhaps it was a wasteland, its surface melted to glass or reduced to radioactive rubble, or even obliterated entirely by war or stellar disaster. Perhaps they had never had a home world at all, and had always travelled the galaxy on a fleet of rapid attack ships that appeared and vanished as they willed it. That was one secret they kept.
It was possible that someone could stumble on their home world, or that the truth of their world was hidden in the depths of some Administratum records-house. A deeper secret, one that no accident could bring to light, was the omens that drove them.
Every Jade Dragon was surrounded by omens that gathered towards him, drifting through fate to cling to him. He saw them in the stars, in the corpses and ruination of every battlefield, the visions they saw in their meditations and the thousand random events that could be interpreted every day. One might see knives everywhere. Another saw the flight, the wheeling of a host of predators in perfect coordination. Thunderclouds heavy with the promise of lightning. Birds of prey. Guns. A grinning face. They moulded a Jade Dragon to their image, and every time he saw them in an enemy’s wound or the sliding past of the stars he adhered a little closer to their omen’s way of killing. Whenever he saw it he gave thanks to the fates that had shown it to him, and sought out the next enemy on the battlefield to inflict the prophesied way of death.
But there were greater omens, omens of the void, that touched the whole Chapter when they emerged from the blackness between the stars. Emerging from a warp jump on the way to the Gravenhal Crusade, the Jade Dragons fleet had witnessed a formation of stars shaped like a great archer, drawing back his bow and firing off a supernova that filled that quadrant of the sky with silver fire. When the Jade Dragons saw the archer next, be it a tribal enemy with a bow or the logo on a burned-out manufactorum, they saw it as a sign to strike now, strike hard and leaving nothing back to caution, for that was how the Gravenhal Crusade was won. Before the massacre at Ramnes Point the Chapter had witnessed a binary system, one star flaring bright, the other black and dead, and so the omen of a face with one eye gouged out and the other wide open told them their allies would turn on them. These were strong omens, the mightiest, read from the stars by the Chapter who alone could read His will written by fate.
As we hunt, so we are hunted. Thus went a secret that novices were told as they were implanted with the black carapace and took on the armour of a Jade Dragon. Just as they were seeking their own omens, they learned that the Chapter was not the greatest predator in the ocean of space. There was another that stalked them everywhere they went, looming out of sight to be glimpsed once every few centuries in the shadow of a dead world or hiding among the flares of a bloated star.
This was the Black Leviathan. It had been there from the start, since the murky time when the Jade Dragons Chapter was founded. It was the darkness within them and the treacherous enemy without, it was deceit and perfidy incarnate. It was, above everything, betrayal. The Black Leviathan was the shadow of the Great Adversary, of the gods of the warp, of the corruptive and infinite enemy that men called Chaos.
When the Jade Dragons saw the Black Leviathan, they knew that Chaos was close. The daemon and the witch worked their magics when the Leviathan was near. When the Jade Dragons glimpsed its shadow, caught its scent, then Chaos and all its madness and betrayal were sure to follow. In form it was a great dark mass trailing tentacles, a drinker of starlight that left suns dark and cold in its wake, sometimes with a planet-sized eye rolling in the seething blackness, sometimes with a vast maw that dragged in everything in its path. It had picked off Jade Dragons spaceships before, leaving them scarred with the coils of its tentacles and crushed of all life, the battle-brothers inside crumbling skeletons within their armour. Even as the Jade Dragons hunted, the Black Leviathan hunted them in turn, a constant reminder that they were not the sole predators in the galaxy.
They told a tale, perhaps one that had originated among the voidborn of the Imperial space lanes, perhaps gleaned by the Jade Dragons from a captive taken among the worshippers of the dark gods. They said a champion among the betrayers sought to impress his gods by cutting a sliver of flesh from the Black Leviathan and wearing it as a cloak or hanging it as his standard, a mark the gods of the warp could not ignore. When next he was seen he lay dead and drained of life on a world chewed and mutilated by the Leviathan’s coils. In the champion’s hand was the hide of the Black Leviathan.
The Leviathan’s hide was the same as its shadow. It brought the same weight of portent with it. No Jade Dragon would mistake the gnarled pelt of the sea creature held in mockery of them. None would see anything but Chaos in the future.
The Ultramarines were automatons, blindly obeying a codex and the words of a long-dead primarch. They were blinkered to the truth, if that truth did not tally with what they had been taught and witnessed before. The Jade Dragons were not so constrained. Devynius and his Ultramarines might ignore it, but Seanoa and his battle-brothers knew who the true enemy on Briseis was.
Chapter Three
‘Why do we fight? There are many answers, but one will always ring true. Look upon the worlds of your Imperium, upon the cities, and above all upon the people. That is why you fight.’
– Codex Astartes
The sun was high, a searing point of light in the black sky. The disc of Agrellan was half-full, the rest of it dipping below one horizon, the sooty wilderness between its hive cities streaked with the spires of Port Memnor’s skyline. Twelve figures were marched out onto the rockcrete promontory jutting from one of the upper class hab-blocks that clustered a short distance from the parliament building. This district of Port Memnor was in the grander Imperial style, with walls shored up by eagle-headed buttresses and every street junction watched over by a statue in marble or bronze of sector governors and Imperial nobles. It was normally stern and magnificent, but that noon it was more sombre than usual and none could deny the tension in the air.
The twelve hooded figures shuffled, heads bowed, at the order of the sergeant of the Memnoran Peacemakers. A squad of Peacemakers, the armed police force of the city, watched over proceedings as the prisoners lined up.
Captain Devynius watched from the adjoining apartment in the hab-block. Outside the window, which opened onto the promontory as if onto a balcony, the sergeant took a ledger from one of his troopers and began to read from it.
A crowd had gathered. It had been filtered by the Peacemaker soldiers stationed in the streets nearby – most were well-to-do citizens of Port Memnor, wearing more subtle echoes of the ruling class’s fashions. The wizened figures of tribal elders stood apart, shadowed by Peacemakers and their own attendants, for it was important that they be made a part of proceedings. A substantial number of those watching were from Briseis’s media, using picters and boom vox-catchers to record the events.
‘We should be seen,’ said Procurator Kolnis. ‘You especially.’ He looked very much at home in the apartment, his black greatcoat matching the severe décor of devotional paintings and furnishings in mourning colours.
‘I am still uncomfortable with conducting our business publicly,’ said Devynius. ‘The Ultramarines are soldiers, not diplomats.’
‘Believe me, lord captain, the sight of you is one of the most useful assets we have,’ replied the procurator. He was a man of the Administratum, one of the few Imperial officials in Port Memnor. His job was technically limited to ensuring the planetoid supplied its portion of Agrellan’s tithe to the Imperium, but in ef
fect he had been in charge of monitoring and fighting the growing xenophile threat before the Space Marines had arrived. ‘The massacre at the parliament has riled them up. They took to the streets in the Chrono-Wrights’ District. My people say they’re one step from rioting, and Throne knows we don’t need that. The xenophiles could commit who knows what atrocities under the cover of such unrest. They must be scolded, these people, shocked into inaction and obedience, and the sight of a Space Marine in the city will do that. Perhaps you do not know, lord captain, the effect such a sight has on an Emperor-fearing soul. No doubt the people of Macragge are used to an Ultramarine on every street corner. Not so here.’
‘I concur,’ said a third member of the party. The voice was flat and measured, and came from below the hood of a floor-length dark red cloak. Magos Skepteris was the most senior of the civilian Imperial personnel on Briseis, but she was not minded to take such a visible place in civil affairs as the procurator. Her responsibility was oversight of the laser defence batteries and associated plasma generators that defended the city’s spaceport, and she had very much the air of someone who would rather be there than here. Only the lower half of her face was visible – her skin was pale, her chin sharp, and rather distractingly her teeth were steel. One of her arms had been amputated at the shoulder and replaced with a trio of mechadendrites that hung, braided and coiled, around her neck like a massive gorget of steel snakes. ‘It behoves us to make all use of the resources at our disposal. Our task here is at least in part a psychological campaign for the suppression of rebellious intentions and the discouraging of xenophile sympathies. To be presented with such a symbol of Imperial capacity for violence will crush many intentions of sedition.’
‘We must make use of more than fear,’ said Devynius. ‘It is devotion to the Emperor and loyalty to their fellow men that will move these people to root out the xenophiles. Not fear.’
‘Not fear alone, granted,’ said Procurator Kolnis. ‘But believe me, fear should come first.’
‘The crimes are as follows,’ the sergeant outside was saying. This task fell to the local law enforcement of Port Memnor but no one would be ignorant of the hand of the Imperium behind it. ‘The placing of the Emperor’s goods and persons in the hands of the xenos enemy. The denouncing of the Emperor and His divine right. The sheltering and protection of xenos inimical to mankind. The setting of explosives. The dissemination of heretical literature and ideas. Murder of an Imperial official. Also several charges of common murder, theft and wounding. These charges to comprise a manifest and undoubted instance of heresy, foulest of crimes, striking as it does against mankind itself. The sentence pronounced is death.’
‘Captain?’ said the procurator. ‘Shall we?’
Devynius followed the procurator out of the grand windows onto the promontory. The rockcrete expanse had been used as an execution ground by the nobles of Briseis since the first towers of Port Memnor had been raised. The chambers adjoining it had been much prized for the excellent view of the executions, which could be observed by the inhabitants over a glass of strong wine and music. Now many of the noble families had quietly left Port Memnor, leaving only those involved in its government or who thought they had a way of profiting from the growing unrest, leaving places like this empty.
Devynius emerged into the noon sun. The reaction was loud and immediate. The onlookers gasped and cried out. Some were dismayed, others shouted prayers of thanks that the Emperor’s Angels of Death had come to Briseis. All of them were afraid. Picters clicked and whirred, trying to get the best shot of the armoured giant who had suddenly appeared. Beside him, the procurator and even the outlandish and rarely-seen magos were diminished to mere details. Devynius’s armour had the gilded trim that marked him as a captain of the Ultramarines, and he went without his helmet to reveal a blunt, dark-skinned face with a wide and intelligent brow the picters zoomed in to capture. A pict-servitor took flight, buzzing on tiny rotors as it hovered as close as it dared to steal the image of the Ultramarine and transmit it to the city’s media.
‘I’m sure they would appreciate a few words,’ said the procurator.
‘I’m sure they would,’ replied Devynius tightly.
The sergeant ordered five men to stand forward. They were the execution detail, selected by lot from the Peacemaker squad. They were armed with rapid-firing lascarbines, their power packs supercharged to deliver greater killing power. It reduced the charge capacity, but only one burst of fire was needed here. The troops stood to face the prisoners, who were lined up against a wall that bore the scars of having been riddled with las-fire and resurfaced many times. The sergeant walked along the line of prisoners asking if they wanted their hoods removed. Some did, most did not. The revealed faces were of clockmakers, dirty and scarred, eyes bleary from years staring at tiny cogs on black velvet. Those eyes widened at the sight of Devynius, and were fixed on him rather than the soldiers about to shoot them. They murmured prayers under their breath, as if asking if they were dead and were being confronted by a vision of the Emperor’s justice come to usher them into the afterlife.
Devynius watched as the sergeant gave the order to ready arms, and to take aim. The unhooded prisoners did not take their eyes off Devynius as a volley of las-fire sheared through them, the sharp cracks of superheated air mingling with the gasps from the crowd. The bodies fell, and those not called upon to perform the execution stepped up to take on clean-up duty.
‘Good,’ said the procurator. ‘Always a nasty mess when things don’t go to plan.’
Devynius glowered up at the picter-servitor, which backed off and panned across the bodies. They lay in spreading pools of blood in undignified heaps. The clean-up detail were unfurling black corpse bags ready to cart them away in a waiting Peacemaker ground vehicle.
‘The xenos wanted the massacre,’ said Devynius. ‘They have their hooks deep into this city. We cannot keep killing until the xenophiles are all gone, or we will not have a city left for the Imperium to make use of.’
‘Then your battle-brothers had better root out the aliens before it comes to that.’
‘Most citizens,’ said Devynius, ‘do not speak to a Space Marine thus.’
‘I hope, captain, to rule this city one day soon,’ said the procurator. ‘What remains of the parliament cannot do it. That Baron Maelenar boy cannot do it, he’s no more than a child. This world needs a governor. It will be my duty to govern in the God-Emperor’s name. I can hardly take on such a responsibility if I flinch in fear when confronted by even one so intimidating as yourself. Not that I don’t feel some of that fear and awe with which the prayer books instil us.’
The crowd were departing, the media crews getting the last shots of the bodies as they were zipped up in their bags. One of the onlookers was escorted onto the execution ground by a Peacemaker trooper – it was an elderly woman, her head bent and face lined, thick grey hair tied in long plaits. She wore long dark green robes and walked with a stick as gnarled as she was.
‘One of the elders,’ said the trooper. ‘Of the Thundercliff.’
‘Tribals, lord procurator,’ said the Peacemaker sergeant, who was making a determined effort not to stare at Devynius.
‘Tribals,’ repeated the procurator wearily. ‘What does she want?’
‘It is not with you, lord procurator,’ replied the elder. ‘Nor with the Angel of Death. It is with the magos.’
Magos Skepteris tilted her head in as profound an expression of surprise as she seemed able to summon. ‘With me, elder?’
‘The deaths at the parliament have stirred up the people,’ said the elder. ‘This you know. These executions and their timing are surely intended to remind the people of their subservience to the Imperium. But this alone will not keep them in check. I can read the pulse of the people as you cannot, my lords. Trust me when I say this.’
‘And what solution do you suggest, elder?’ asked Magos Skepteris.
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‘Only this. The magos is the most senior of the Imperium’s servants on Briseis and, due to her limited interaction with the people, is seen as impartial. A gesture by her would do much to quell the anger of our people.’
‘I am not accustomed to presenting a public face,’ said Skepteris.
‘There need be minimum effort on your part,’ said the elder, ‘and the good name of the Priesthood of Mars shall be preserved. A mere ceremony, performed for public consumption, according to the traditions of our world. We request, magos, that you become a member of the Thundercliff tribe.’
‘Now, now,’ interrupted Procurator Kolnis, ‘such a thing would be gravely irregular. The officials of the Adepta have stayed well clear of tribal politics.’
‘And thus the gesture will have all the more import,’ said the elder. ‘Trust me, lords, this is not a step we undertake lightly either. Extending membership of the tribe to one not born to Briseis has never been even suggested before. But we of the Thundercliff love our world, and we despise the unrest in its streets. If we can help quell it without bloodshed or the oppression of fear, we shall do so. It is the best way to preserve our way of life and fulfil our duties to the Imperium.’
‘My own duty,’ interjected Devynius, ‘is to see Briseis secured for the use of the Imperial war effort on Agrellan, with the minimum of violence against its people. Any proposal that will turn the people away from the xenophiles is one I would support.’
The elder bowed her head in Devynius’s direction, showing deference but none of the fear Devynius was so used to. ‘My thanks, lord captain. Some among the tribes fear you, and say you can only be here to do great bloodshed among us. But the Thundercliff are loyal, and rejoiced when the Angels of Death were revealed among us.’
‘I shall think on this, elder,’ said Magos Skepteris.
‘That is all we ask,’ said the elder. ‘The tribe desires greatly the elimination of the alien influence on our people. We, the autochthonous of Briseis, born from the earth, hate the alien with the passion of our Lord Angel here. However you choose to destroy the xenos and the xenophile, the Thundercliff shall stand with you.’