by Various
‘Little one, enough. There is only one thing I need to know.’ Even as he speaks, he’s reaching for the chainsword sheathed on the closest Dark Angel’s back.
‘What is it?’ the warrior asks, turning to face him.
Sevatar’s fingers tighten around the handle of the legionary’s war-scarred blade. He knows that a long and confined journey through the ship’s maintenance ducts lies in his immediate future.
And she will have to help him, as best she can. But it will be worth it.
Justice. Judgement. Punishment.
‘Just tell me where you are, Altani. I want to hear your choir sing.’
The astropathic choir is in session. Its twenty members commune in absolute harmony beneath a great, reinforced dome that offers a breathtaking view of the star-scattered heavens.
Usually, all is peaceful here. And inside the twenty locked, ritually etched gnosis pods, all is still at peace. They are hermetically sealed against outside air and the raving wail of siren alarms now washing the deck with shades of warning red. The astropaths sleep on, their minds linked in communion, ready to do as their overlords desire – to reach out into the boiling storm and spend their energies in another futile attempt to send word to distant Terra.
Only one of the slumbering forms stirs, though she doesn’t awaken. Her consciousness stays on the edge of the choir’s perfect psychic orchestra, and she lets their voices wash over her, as she adds her own harmony back into their shared song.
Outside the wall-mounted pods, an intruder roams the halls of the choir chambers.
Dozens of adepts labour frantically beneath the screaming sirens. They work the chamber’s arcane machinery, preparing to ease the pain of their charges when the choir’s song can safely be brought to an abrupt end.
And they work to seal the inner sanctum. One of them shrieks into a vox-console, crying out for warriors of the I Legion to come at once, to cut their way through the doors if they must. In the halls where no Space Marine is permitted to tread, their presence is demanded for the first time in living memory.
Sevatar moves amongst the fleeing slaves and thralls in a muscled sprint, sparing them from the fall of his blade. They are insects to him, so irrelevant that they may as well not exist.
He pauses at her pod.
He knows that he has only seconds at best, and each heartbeat spent with her is a heartbeat wasted, but still he finds himself compelled to remain.
She sleeps inside: a girl-child of bruised skin, strapped foetal in the cushioned gnosis pod. Bio-data wires, muscle needles, and sustenance cables puncture her temples, spine, and limbs in too many places to count with such a brief glance. The fall of her ragged hair hides her empty eye sockets.
Though she is almost motionless in the atmosphere-controlled life cradle, Sevatar lingers just long enough to see her fingertips twitch. Soft, smooth fingers that will never know the grip of a weapon.
He almost presses his hand to the glass of the pod, but a traitor’s bloody palm print would only incriminate her further.
So that’s what you look like,+ she says in his mind. Within the gnosis coffin, the girl sleeps on even as she projects the words into his mind. She doesn’t speak of the hundreds of scars lining his pale flesh, or the unnatural blackness of his eyes. +You look tired, Jago.+
His only reply is a bloodstained grin.
Then he’s gone. Duty calls.
As the chainsword bites into the choir’s primary gnosis pod, it vents oxygen as pressurised gas and coolant as a spillage of clear, fizzing liquid. The occupant, a wizened and grey-haired revenant of a man by the name of Mnemoc, is thirty Terran-standard years old. He looks fifty, and has the health of a man of seventy.
Astrotelepathy is an unkind vocation. The brighter a mind burns, the more voraciously it eats through the body’s resources.
This ruined man screams in blind panic as he’s pulled from his cushioned cradle. Far greater than the shock of being unhooked from the muscle needles and bio-feeds is the devastating shriek as he falls out of the choir’s harmonic song. Fire rakes across the surface of his mind, moving into the veins of his brain like a flood of burning oil.
But even weakened by disorientation and stunned by pain, instinct doesn’t desert him entirely. As he is hauled into the air by impossibly strong hands, he reaches for the lash at his hip... only to find that it isn’t there.
Unlike most astropaths, the overseer’s eye sockets aren’t empty. Crude bionics whirr and click as they seek to refocus, offering him the distorted image of a towering man he doesn’t know, staring into his face with black eyes that he doesn’t recognise, whispering in a voice he’s never heard before.
‘I have come for you.’
Overseer Mnemoc’s first word after awakening is a single syllable. He asks what many men in his position might well ask. ‘Why?’
His first word is also his last. Sevatar collars him with his own lash, garrotting the helpless man with the same weapon Mnemoc used to beat the youngest member of his choir until her spine gave out.
Jago Sevatarion is an experienced murderer, well familiar with the force required to kill a man in any way the mortal mind can imagine. He strangles the master of astropaths slowly, lovingly, his gene-enhanced muscles barely straining, using just enough strength to drag out the execution without breaking the psyker’s neck.
The overseer’s psychic sense is a maddened, feral thing, pathetically flapping against the Night Lord’s mind as uselessly as his thin fingers claw at Sevatar’s unyielding flesh.
His eyes bulge. The flesh of his face darkens from red to purple and finally to blue. His struggles weaken, become twitches, and finally cease.
Sevatar doesn’t let go. Not yet.
For all his flaws, he’s a thorough soul when it comes to duty.
Huge ornate doors, sealed against intrusion, finally open to admit a phalanx of knights in black armour. The Dark Angels surround him, ordering him to the deck, raising their bolters to take aim.
‘I am justice,’ Sevatar calls out to them. With a last wrenching twist, he breaks the corpse’s neck and casts it onto the deck by his bare feet. ‘I am judgement. I am punishment. And I surrender.’
He sits alone in the blackened stillness, listening to the slow rhythm of his breathing. A sense of serenity cloaks him, and a feeling of cold, cold focus that has eluded him for decades.
When he dreams now it is not of the dead, but of the endless night between worlds. The deepest void, where a thousand threats drift, away from the light of loyal suns. The domains of aliens and monsters forced into exile by the Great Crusade, still crying out to be extinguished once and for all. The true threats to mankind.
‘Jago,’ the girl’s voice comes to him again at last. ‘Are you still alive?’
And in the darkness of his cell, Sevatar smiles.
Sins of the
Father
Andy Smillie
In my darker moments, I do not love my sons.
Sanguinius was unmoving as the blades clashed around him. His thoughts weighed upon him like the press of time. They rooted him in place, immobile at the centre of the duelling stone as the two combatants exchanged blows.
In these moments, I dwell on what is to come.
Garbed in a simple robe, the beauty of his form eclipsed the many statues and sculptures bordering the chamber, deep within the Fortress of Hera. A numinous, angelic being, he was an ode to the beauty and strength of the Emperor’s creations.
And to all save his father, the furrow in his brow would have gone unnoticed.
My sons will never rise to my virtue. They will remain as tarnished mirrors, shining in poor reflection of a greatness my death will rob from them. They do not have the valour to rise against the curse of their blood. Except…
Except, perhaps, for these two.
The Tempest of Angels w
as a perilous ritual. Sanguinius stood at its eye, as the blades of the Flesh Tearer and the Saviour whirled about him. He followed the ebb and flow of the duel, appraising the strength and skill of the pair as they snarled and railed against one another.
My father cast me in the image of an angel. A divine protector or a wrathful destroyer, he has never said. It is a quirk of his nature to create that which might surprise his knowing. He has left it for me to decide how history shall record my deeds.
Sanguinius closed his eyes, letting his mind drift back to the Triumph at Ullanor. He had always felt alone. Even then. Even in the presence of so many of his brothers. He saw each of their faces, caught the glimmer of unfolding destiny in their eyes.
My brothers suffer from no such indecision. Magnus is no warrior and Angron no tactician. Their paths were chosen for them, freeing them from the burden of such questions.
Sparks danced across Sanguinius’ face as the combatants’ blades clashed once more. The twin slivers of Baalite steel were anger-hot with friction.
Destroyer. Protector. I am cursed to see the ends of each of these paths, and I know of the pain to turn from either. In my weakness, I tread the line of both.
He opened his eyes. The combatants fought almost on top of him, their furious cuts and thrusts warming his skin.
But these two, these flawed sons of mine, they walk only a single path.
Driven by murderous intent, a blade angled towards Sanguinius’ throat. The primarch remained still, and lived – the Flesh Tearer’s kill-stroke denied by the blade of the Saviour.
Azkaellon, chief among my Sanguinary Guard, is my greatest protector. The gold and bronze of his armour serves as an echo of the purity he carries in his hearts. Driven by duty, by pride, he is a masterful swordsman, his strokes balanced, measured and poised.
Azkaellon grunted with effort and shouldered his opponent back away from the primarch.
Amit, Captain of the Fifth Company, a warrior born. He would fight until the stars burned cold. His armour carries the scars others reserve for their souls. Caked in blood, it is stained the deepest crimson. He is a destroyer, fighting with the fury of a berzerker. His brutal blows allow for no defence.
Amit growled, regaining his footing and redoubling his attack.
Their single-mindedness will see them outlive me. It gives them the strength to do what others cannot.
And yet, I have foreseen a future without angels…
Ka’Bandha roars in triumph as my body breaks against the ground. Satisfied in his vengeance, he beats his wings and hurls himself into a distant melee.
I lie still.
‘No!’ Azkaellon’s cry is one of rage and anguish.
He runs to me, ignoring the calls of his warriors as he abandons them.
‘L-lord…’ he stammers, and falls to his knees.
He pulls me close, cradling my body against his own. My head rests upon his sculpted breastplate. My features are as they are now – virginal and unbroken.
‘Father,’ Azkaellon shakes me, driven frantic by grief as he searches for the life that no longer beats within me. ‘He is dead…’ He turns his gaze skyward, searching for some deity who would denounce his claim. ‘Our father Sanguinius is dead!’
Around him, parts of the Palace blaze incandescently in their death throes. Fire consumes the ground and broils over the towering walls. Ichorous flesh burns like oil, stripped from corpses and the still-living by gods bent on annihilation.
‘How… how can this be?’ Removing his helm, Azkaellon casts his gaze around, as though seeing the world with his own eyes might change its appearance. It does not.
Hell surrounds him. An absence of hope so absolute as to render the Blood Angel prostrate, his blade slipping from his grasp. His brothers are dying. Red-skinned daemons eviscerate them with barbed claws, while others hack them apart with obsidian blades. So fast are their enemies that the Blood Angels seem to fight in slow motion, the bark of their boltguns drowned out by the snarling of the beasts that they fight.
It is a mosaic of carnage and madness, a nightmare made real. It is the end of all things.
‘Lord! Lord Azkaellon, you must fight.’
Azkaellon glances up at the Blood Angel standing over him. The warrior’s armour is scorched black, charred by unnatural fire.
‘My lord, we need your blade.’
Anger mixed with desperation twists the Blood Angel’s face into a snarl.
‘He… he is gone. We are undone,’ Azkaellon’s voice is hollow, stripped of emotion by despair.
‘Commander Azkaellon, we need you! We cannot–’
The Blood Angel’s head and torso vanish in a flash of crimson lightning, vaporized by some ensorcelled weapon of the enemy.
Azkaellon looks down at the Blood Angel’s remains, losing himself in the expanding pool of blood as it spreads across the floor.
‘We are lost…’
Amit stumbles forward. Alone in a vast desert, lost amongst the shifting red dunes that stretch in every direction, he has only his rage to sustain him. He has followed his prey there, bleeding his own warriors into annihilation to do so. The sand beneath his feet is not crushed rock – it is a reminder of that gore-riven battle. He walks on the dust of the dead, hills of blood that have been dried and baked by the eight suns blazing overhead.
‘I will find you.’
Amit’s voice is a rasping snarl, worn raw by those same four words.
The daemon laughs in response. It is a mocking growl, a rumble of contempt that echoes all around like primal thunder.
Amit thrusts his blade to the sky. ‘You cannot hide from my blade, daemon. Not forever. I will find you, and I will kill you.’
The crimson heavens crackle with fire. A lash of the daemon’s will tears across it, opening a ragged wound in the firmament. Blood, crimson and dark, falls in a vengeful downpour.
‘That will not stop me,’ Amit snarls.
He is wrong.
The blood-rain falls in a thickening torrent, driving Amit from his feet and churning the dunes beneath him into a thick sludge.
‘Face me, daemon,’ Amit spits, grunting with effort as he struggles forward, fighting in vain to keep his bulk from sinking into the mire. ‘Coward. Fight me!’
Frustration cuts him like a blade as the ground drinks its fill, and becomes as an ocean. Helpless, the lord of the Flesh Tearers sinks into the crimson abyss.
‘No!’
Amit’s cry is practically inaudible, swallowed by bloody waves that growl as they break.
He tries to rise, to swim to the surface, but the blood is too thick, his armour too heavy. He sinks downwards, down into the depths of murder that form the world.
‘No…’
The thick, arterial liquid fills his lungs, dragging him downwards until he strikes the sea bed – an undulating landscape of polished skulls. Hundreds of thousands of them crowd the bedrock.
And yet, there is space for one more.
‘Stop.’
At Sanguinius’ command, Amit and Azkaellon put up their blades.
‘Switch places.’
‘Lord?’ Azkaellon’s brow creased in confusion.
‘Azkaellon, you will attack. Amit, you will defend me.’
‘Lord, I have not the temperam–’
‘No, Amit, you do not,’ Sanguinius’ voice was hard but his eyes held no malice. ‘You fight to kill with no concern for survival. And you, Azkaellon,’ Sanguinius shifted his gaze to the other Blood Angel. ‘You fight only to protect with no consideration to what survival might mean.’
Azkaellon held up a hand in protest. ‘I fight for the Legion, for the memory of the Emperor and the Imperium-that-was.’
‘No, you do not,’ Sanguinius shook his head. ‘You fight for your own honour. You fight for me.’
Azkaell
on looked pained, as though stung by a blade. ‘And what cause could be greater?’
‘It is not a sin, and it has served you well. But it is not enough. When this new Imperium falls, and we have all been cast down… When I am gone, who will you fight for then?’
Azkaellon’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘Lord, that will not–’
‘You are so certain of a future that was hidden even from my father?’
‘Lord… forgive me,’ Azkaellon bowed his head in deference.
‘And you, Amit, you fight because the din of battle brings you peace.’
Amit looked away, unable to hold his lord’s gaze.
‘There will come a time when the cries of those you have led to death will drown out the roar in your veins. There will come a time when you must defend what little we have left.’
Amit said nothing, his jaw clenched tight.
‘Now…’ Sanguinius returned to his position at the centre of the duelling stone. ‘Switch places.’
Without another word, Amit and Azkaellon changed positions, and readied their blades.
‘My life is in your hands, my sons. Do not waste it.’
The Eagle’s
Talon
John French
///SAMPLE FROM EAGLE’S TALON VOX FRAGMENT (VII).///
///PLEASE REVIEW AND CONFIRM RECORDING CLARITY BEFORE ACCESSING FULL ARCHIVE.///
TH-144: <
GA-739: How long until they are past you?
AR-502: <
TH-144: <
AR-502: <
GA-739: All units, this is Gammus. I am cutting prime arterial corridor. Charges firing in five, four, three, two... Detonate.