The sergeant hesitated for a moment, then tore his hand from the little man's chest, ripping bone, lung and flesh out along with it. The ruined figure dropped away and sank into the torpid black water.
Petius finished applying the salve to a small wound on Tarikus's face and pronounced him healthy. His Space Marine physiology was already flushing the toxins from the sewer out of his system, and the salve would help it in the process. He watched as the Merrons brought up the caged ones from the chamber, as men and women greeted their families with tears; some joyful at finding those they loved still alive, some weeping as bloated, pallid corpses were hoisted to the surface. He noted with some small satisfaction that Dassar had been reunited with his wife and son; at least for the helot, the Emperor had moved through Tarikus this day to deliver him from his pain.
He rose to his feet as Captain Consultus approached, with Gorn and Noxx a step behind.
'Tarikus, you performed well. A citation may be in order.'
Gorn gave a reluctant nod of agreement. 'Perhaps so, brother-captain.'
'This is at an end, then?' he asked.
'It is,' said Consultus. 'When Petius returned to the garrison with news of what transpired, I asked Captain Gorn to lend us the arms of his Flesh Tearers.'
'It seemed a logical course of action,' noted Gorn.
Petius jerked a thumb at several impact craters nearby. 'We are storming the tunnels, flushing them out with flamers and plasma-fire. It is a nest of foulness and corruption down there.'
'The man,' Tarikus began. 'He wore our armour…'
'Not quite,' said Gorn, 'it was a well-crafted copy, but made from a poor ceramic compound. Not even strong enough to deflect a punch.'
'But it was similar enough to convince the Merrons.'
Consultus nodded his assent. 'He preyed on their fears to discredit the Flesh Tearers and the Adeptus Astartes.'
'To what purpose?' said Petius.
In reply, Noxx tossed a spherical white object at the youth, but Tarikus snatched it from the air before it reached him. It was a human skull, and etched into its bone were whorls and patterns of lines. The matrix of thin bands seemed to shimmer in the half-light, forming the shape of a many-angled star. 'Ask him,' said Noxx.
Gorn cocked his head and subvocalised a message into the comm-net. 'Our transports are approaching orbit. By your leave, brother-captain, if you have no further use for us, the Flesh Tearers would quit this troublesome world.'
'Thank you for your assistance, Brother Gorn,' said Consultus, offering his hand. 'Perhaps we will meet again under better circumstances?'
'Perhaps,' Gorn replied, returning the gesture. He gave Tarikus a wary nod and walked away. Noxx followed and did not look back.
The Doom Eagle sergeant watched them go in silence.
Tarikus found himself in the company of his captain once again a few days later, as he completed his prayers after early morning firing rites.
'Brother-captain,' he began, 'have the tunnels been cleansed?'
'The taint of evil has been purged,' Consultus replied.
'Were all the missing civilians accounted for?' Tarikus said after a moment.
Consultus gave him a neutral look. 'We only found live victims in the cavern where you killed the cultist, the Red. There were several caches of bodies scattered around the sewer complex.'
'They were all killed in the same manner?' he pressed.
'Not all,' said the captain. 'A handful were found with different wounds.'
'In what way?'
'It is of little consequence now, Tarikus, but if you must know, there were some that sported torn, ragged wounds from claws and teeth. From human teeth.'
Despite himself, the sergeant felt a shudder of cold run along his spine. 'The Red killed only by draining blood. If he was not responsible, then who was?'
'Who indeed?' said the Captain as he walked away.
Tarikus looked up into the sky, where the crimson night was fading into dawn; if he had an answer to that question, he kept it to himself.
THE BLOOD OF ANGELS
C S Goto
‘Would you really want to meet an angel? With the tip of one wing in heaven and the other dripping with blood, could there be any soul more tortured?’
- Angels Sanguine Chaplain, addressing aspirant Baalite warriors.
The burners roared, ripping the heavily shadowed air into strips of flame. Vast stone pillars reached up towards the rapidly descending figure, twisting into arches that aspired to the heavens. The jump pack threw fire into the yawning dark of the temple, propelling Tenjin down from the ugly crater he had punched through the gargoyle infested roof. At his back, chasing his diagonal path down through the echoing hollows of the inner sanctum, a shaft of moonlight pierced the shrouded gloom like a javelin stuck in his back. As Tenjin turned, gyroscoping throughout his spot-lit descent, searching for his target, the moonlight glinted off the blood-red that covered the right-hand side of his armour. He seemed to pulse with life.
The sanctum reverberated with the gaseous thunder of the jump pack, obliterating the awful silence that fled from its sanctimonious haven. Tenjin could hear nothing but the roar of flames and power. Blood throbbed in his brain, pounding out a pattern in his ears, sending a thrill through his body like the drums of war. His rapid drop from the giant and ornate ceiling had pushed him through greater negative g-forces than a normal man could have withstood, but his augmented body registered only a slight red tinge in his vision as some capillaries burst.
In the gloom that engulfed him, Tenjin could see almost nothing. His bloody eyes scanned the darkness for any sign of movement. The flames from his jump pack sent the shadows dancing into frenzies, projecting grotesque and unnatural images against the distant walls and pillars. His eyes flickered and darted, struggling to separate the random flood of movement from the silhouette of his enemy, knowing all the time that Ansatsu could see him clearly, falling out of the night sky like a burning meteor.
There. A flash of red. Deep red lost in the darkness. Darting from pillar to pillar. Gone again.
Tenjin slowed his descent, provoking a powerful roar of resistance from the jets of his jump pack as they struggled to balance his gigantic form. He was hovering now. Stationary. Twenty meters from the ground. Fire spilled out from the base of his pack, incinerating a ceremonial banner, which fell in burning tatters from its tethers strung between two great pillars beneath him. Fragments of burning textile fluttered to the ground, shedding moments of light across the stone floor, rendering the temple into fractions of daylight.
There. Behind the pillar on the left. The red flashed back into hiding, but it was too late. Tenjin leaned forward over the barrel of his flamer, balancing the back-thrust it was about to produce with an angle from his jump pack. The flamer screeched into life, sending a jet of chemical fire hissing through the air until it plumed and rushed around the pillar like water around rock. The darkness receded from the flames, as though scorched by its ferocity. From the other side of the pillar came a sharp explosion, like a grenade suddenly igniting after being unexpectedly superheated by the chemical fire. An armoured warrior rolled crisply out from behind the stone column, accelerated but unhurt by the concussion. He rolled into a tight crouch, one knee resting on the ground, and clicked off two shots from the bolter in his left hand.
The bolts dove into the stream of flame and rocketed up against the current, seeking the source. Tenjin was an easy target - a fiery angel, hovering in a void of darkness. Ansatsu despatched his shots and then was back into the shadows. Tenjin twisted to the side, firing his jump pack suddenly, but the jets could not move him in time; the bolts punched squarely into his flamer, shattering its structure. In a single swift movement, Tenjin cast the flamer into the gloom and cut the power to his jump pack. As the bolts ignited in his weapon, the flamer exploded into a blinding rage of chemical flames. It spiralled straight into the immovable stone of a giant column.
Hidden behind the sudden and imp
ossibly bright flash, Tenjin dropped heavily into a crouch behind the altar at the centre of the temple. His landing cracked the immense flagstones at his feet, but he was instantly ready with his bolter braced on one knee behind the cover of the altar. With his jump pack extinguished and his flamer destroyed, Tenjin could be just as invisible as his foe.
‘Come out, traitor!’ Tenjin’s voice echoed between the mighty columns that dwarfed the two Space Marines.
‘It is you who are the traitor, Tenjin…’ The echo decentred Ansatsu’s voice, so Tenjin could not get a fix on his position. From behind the altar, Tenjin scanned the shadows with his red eyes and strained his ears in the sudden silence.
‘You have violated the sanctity of a Temple of Sanguinius and attacked the Honour Guard of a high priest, one of Sanguinius’ Chosen! You damn your soul and those of your fallen Death Company. You do a great dishonour to our glorious Chapter-‘
‘No!’ Tenjin could not listen to this. ‘It is you who damn our souls through your polluted ways!’ The red in his eyes grew darker as blood gushed into his brain, drowning his thoughts and curdling his intent. The blood of Sanguinius flows in my veins. Just as he stood firm in the face of his death, so I shall not falter now. For the Emperor and Sanguinius!
‘For the Emperor and Sanguinius! Death! Death comes for you!’ Tenjin was on his feet, spraying fire from the hissing barrel of his remaining gun. ‘DEATH!’ The superheated air roared into a kinetic frenzy, forging a ring of inferno around the chaplain as he swept the melta-gun from side to side. The giant stone pillars started to crack under the tirade; bubbles began to appear in the cracks. In an instant, the bases of two columns melted away into an ooze of molten rock and the stone above tumbled down to the ground in a deadly cascade of masonry. The distant ceiling split and collapsed, sending shards of decorated plascrete falling into the fray.
‘DEATH! DEATH COMES FOR YOU!’ Tenjin was screaming as he brought the world down around him, firing a continuous barrage of melta into the vague space within his Chapter’s most holy sanctum.
Above the roar of the melta, Tenjin heard a metallic ring and the burst of jets. Suddenly, from amidst the ocean of fire and magma that oozed unstoppably over the ground, a figure rose into the air, blasting gravity away with the force of its jump pack. In one hand, Ansatsu held the Grail of the Angels Sanguine and, in the other, the Chapter’s Exsanguinator - the symbols of his status as Sanguinary High Priest.
Ansatsu started to accelerate away from the liquid hell that was engulfing the floor of the temple. His jump pack flamed gloriously as it pushed him out of the fire and into the encompassing darkness of the majestic arched roof - a burning angel returning to heaven. But Tenjin was moving faster than thought. He had already discarded his melta-gun and clicked his jump pack back into life. Having discarded his heavy weapons, Tenjin was lighter than Ansatsu and he rocketed through the space between them like a bolt from a gun. Tenjin roared through the gathering shadows, feeding energy into his power fist, which hummed into life over his left arm.
Just as Ansatsu reached the hole in the roof, Tenjin reached him. There was no pause for breath, no hesitation, no ceremony, no thought. Tenjin ploughed into Ansatsu diagonally from below, punching his power fist straight through the armoured plate covering his stomach. The fist ripped through armour, flesh and bone, and then armour again, as it wrenched free out of Ansatsu’s back, impaling him on Tenjin’s arm. Ansatsu opened his mouth in pain and shock. His eyes focussed momentarily on Tenjin. Then he was dead.
The momentum carried Tenjin and Ansatsu out of the hole in the roof before Tenjin could bring his jump pack to a stop. He looked down from the moonlit sky, surveying the ruined Temple of the high priest and the litter of dead Space Marines in the courtyard in front of it. For the Emperor and Sanguinius.
Addiss allowed his hood to hide the horror on his face. On the steps of the Temple of the high priest, he could see the chaplain kneeling before the hideously violated figure of Ansatsu. A torrent of blood had gushed down the stairway, flooding out of the hole punched through his body, leaving the high priest in a pool of his own essence. The chaplain was soaked in blood and his eyes shone with red. His power fist lay in the liquid that puddle at his feet and his naked hand held the Chapter’s grail, wrenched from the death-grip of his lord. In his right hand he held the Exsanguinator, rammed unceremoniously into the cavity in the high priest’s abdomen. The device was working energetically, sucking out the sacred blood of Sanguinius’ Chosen. But the chaplain was not collecting the precious fluid into the Exsanguinator’s reservoir, rather he let it spurt and gush out of the machine into the thick pool around the body. It congealed and coagulated as it trickled and oozed across the chaplain’s armour, coating him in a new layer of ichor.
The inquisitor had seen more than enough. He made a swift signal, sending a knot of his retinue scattering into an offensive arc, encircling the foot of the staircase that acted as a podium for the gruesome chaplain’s performance. With another signal from Addiss, the Marines lifted their hellfire bolters and focussed their implacable attention on the Angel Sanguine at the apex of the steps. He ignored them, intent on his task.
‘Chaplain! It is finished. Cease!’
Tenjin turned his head slowly, his burning eyes dancing from the shrouded inquisitor to the Deathwatch Marine at his left shoulder. There was a flicker of recognition. The chaplain squinted slightly, as though in disbelief that the killing had not yet ended. Was it disbelief or relief? He couldn’t tell.
‘Chaplain. If you cannot hear me, you will die.’ Addiss knew that there was a point of no return. A place somewhere beyond humanity from whence even a Space Marine of the Angels Sanguine could not return. He watched the chaplain slowly rise to his feet, thick tendrils of blood running down his slick armoured form, adding to the pool at his feet. He could see the fiery red in the Angel’s eyes and, for a moment, he feared the phantom of righteousness that burned deeply in his glare.
‘There are things far worse than death…’ Tenjin’s voice was tremulous, yet it thundered. The blood was pounding in his head, disrupting his thoughts and dragging his voice from unknown depths within him. ‘I do not fear you.’
There was a click and then a roar of energy as Tenjin’s jump pack ignited once again. He rose slowly into the air, arms spread wide, with the grail held aloft in his left hand. Droplets of blood fell from his feet, sending miniature tidal waves rippling through the pool around Ansatsu.
‘I name you Traitor! Face me! For the Emperor! FOR THE EMPEROR!’ Tenjin’s voice was incensed.
‘You go too far,’ muttered Addiss under his breath as he clenched his fist into the firing signal. A volley of bolts ripped through the air, focussed at the centre of the offensive arc, riddling Tenjin with tiny explosions. The impacts pushed him back through the air and smashed him into the heavy doors of the temple. There was a mighty crunch as the collision sent splinters flying and decimated the jump pack on Tenjin’s back. He slumped to the ground, crumpled and broken.
Climbing the steps towards the temple and the fallen Angel, Addiss paused to survey the scene. The inquisitor’s retinue remained at their posts, guns trained on the ruined chaplain, overseeing the bloody mess of the high priest on the temple steps. Beyond them lay the gold-tinted bodies of Ansatsu’s honour guard - the Chapter’s standard fluttering forlornly in the gentle night breeze, still clutched in the dead fingers of the standard bearer. Interspersed amongst the bodies were those of Death Company Marines, the chaplain’s own guard, who had fought to their deaths, first against their own Chapter and then finally against the might of the inquisitor’s retinue.
‘For the Emperor. For Sanguinius,’ whispered Addiss in awed disbelief.
‘Do you know where you are?’
Tenjin opened his eyes and tried to look around. His head would not turn; thick straps of adamantium ran taught across his forehead and chin, clamping him to the cold table. He lifted his gaze to the face of the interrogator. ‘No,’ he said.
Addiss looked down at the chaplain. The red had faded from his eyes, leaving them glazed and slightly pink. The Angel Sanguine had been stripped of his armour and then strapped to the Lestrallio Tablet. Thick scars covered his skin, punctuated occasionally by the fresh craters left by the bolter shells of the inquisitorial retinue. Tenjin’s augmented body was already healing the wounds. The blood had clotted and scar tissue was beginning to knit over the holes in his flesh.
‘No? But you have been here before, chaplain. You have seen this place before, albeit from a slightly different perspective.’
The bright light above the table shone directly into Tenjin’s sore eyes and disoriented him. He squinted and searched his field of vision for clues. The Apothecarion. Of course. They had brought him to the Apothecarion. Tenjin had been here many times, as a chaplain of the Angels Sanguine. He had manacled his most desperate battle brothers in adamantium and strapped them to this table. He had watched them thrash and spasm, spilling their tortured minds through their mouths until the Black Rage finally destroyed them totally - crushing their consciousness and snapping their spines with a last violent twist. He had listened to the rantings of Angels lost in the echoing visions of Sanguinius’ death aboard the battle barge of Horus himself, reliving those moments of hell as though they were their own. This was the place were the curse of the Blood Angels found its most pitiful voice - no glorious death in combat, swamped under insurmountable enemies, battling to the last - just the screams and shivers of a solitary Marine, alone with his inalienable nature.
Tenjin laughed quietly, blood gurgling thickly in his throat. How pathetic. Did this inquisitor really think that the source of the curse could be divined on Lestrallio’s Tablet? Lestrallio himself had died in terrified lunacy strapped to a table just like this one, screaming at a phantom of Horus: ‘I name you Traitor!’ Does this inquisitor really think that I am so lost to myself that I need to be bound to this fate? Does he think that this is about the Rage, that I succumbed in the midst of my own?
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