by Gav Thorpe
‘If they have not the wit to decide that for themselves, what chance apology will be accepted?’ replied Sabrael. Annael sighed and heard a groan from Zarall.
‘We have also suffered loss,’ Annael said quickly, trying to defuse the building confrontation. ‘Our sergeant lies in the care of Apothecary Gideon, minus a leg. He may never ride again.’
‘A sad loss,’ said Sergeant Amanael. The Fifth Company sergeant looked at Araton. ‘I see that you bear no sergeant’s markings, brother. Do not seek to impede a superior.’
‘Rank and superiority are not the same thing,’ said Sabrael. ‘Besides, we have specific orders from the Grand Master.’
Telemenus strode up to Sabrael. The Ravenwing biker did not move as the warrior of the Fifth Company leaned in close.
‘Do not hide behind the words of the Grand Master,’ said Telemenus, menace in his tone. ‘Say what you really mean, brother.’
‘Test me further, brother, and I shall demonstrate with actions, not words.’ The humour had drained from Sabrael’s voice. He leaned back in his saddle, one hand resting on the pommel of a short blade sheathed behind him. Sabrael’s meaning was clear, for the blade he indicated was an honour sword handed to him by the Grand Master for skill at arms. If Telemenus wished to pursue the matter, Sabrael would call him out in an honour duel. Everyone in the Chapter knew that Telemenus was one of the best marksmen to have ever fought for the Dark Angels, but his blade-work was far inferior to Sabrael’s.
The honour duel would be no contest.
The two squads stood for a moment in tense silence, neither willing to back down.
‘What is the meaning of this gaggle?’ Grand Master Sammael’s irate voice cut across the comm as his jetbike glided into view. His command squadron followed a few metres behind, coming to a stop as Corvex slid to a halt beside Sergeant Amanael. ‘What are you doing here, sergeant? You, Araton, why are you not monitoring your scanners and keeping watch as ordered?’
‘Apologies, Grand Master,’ said Araton. ‘The sergeant and his squad were attempting to pass the perimeter.’
‘Why?’ demanded Sammael, turning his attention to Amanael again. ‘Did you not receive the command to secure position and hold?’
‘Evidently not,’ said Malcifer before Amanael could reply. The Chaplain stepped off his bike and approached Amanael. ‘I do not recall hearing his acknowledgement over the comm. Is that not so, sergeant?’
Annael returned his gaze to the front, or rather to the rear of the squadron, and wondered what Amanael would do. He had a reputation of being quite a stickler for doctrine and duty, but Malcifer had, whether unwitting or deliberately, offered him a way to back down from the confrontation with honour intact on both sides. Annael was not sure the sergeant would accept it, given the warrior’s past behaviour.
‘That is correct, Brother-Chaplain,’ Amanael said, speaking slowly as he chose his words. ‘There was no acknowledgement signal.’
It sounded for a moment that Amanael was going to say something else, but the sergeant held his tongue.
‘Very well,’ said Sammael. ‘Sergeant, return to the accessway and link up with the arriving Fifth Company forces. Araton, your squadron will remain on guard here. Stand by to respond if I call for you.’
‘Grand Master, may we not secure the objective with you?’ asked Sabrael, earning himself glances from the departing Fifth Company squad. ‘It is an honour fitting for those who led the charge.’
‘Sabrael, why am I not surprised that there is conflict between the Second and Fifth Companies where you are present? You will remain on post, as ordered, and be glad that I do not think your question insubordinate.’ Sammael looked at each of the Ravenwing riders in turn, his gaze moving from one to the next without haste. ‘Am I understood?’
Annael bowed his head as the stare of Sammael fell upon him. Sabrael had acted dishonourably, and the rest of the squadron realised they shared his shame.
‘Understood, Grand Master,’ they chorused, like unruly pupils chastised by their tutor.
‘I am sure Brother Malcifer will elaborate at length once we return to the Implacable Justice.’
‘Something for you all to anticipate with joy in your hearts,’ said the Chaplain. ‘An occasion that will make the longest sentry duty seem like the most exciting deployment you have ever undertaken.’
‘If there are no other objections?’ Sammael looked at the squadron, expecting no reply, and nodded. ‘Good. Let us unmask the Overlord.’
The Interrogator
Even before the door to the inner chamber hissed open Sammael knew that the enigmatic Overlord of the Divine and Unworthy was not aboard Port Imperial. The Divine had made their stands at the transport hub and the accessway, not within the communications and command chambers themselves. Their strategy from the outset had been one of delaying the inevitable, not defending a revered leader to the last man.
The command chamber was not empty of foes, however. Half a dozen augmented soldiers rounded on the Grand Master and Harahel as they entered on foot. They had been working at the terminal cluster at the centre of the room and reached for lasrifles, bolters and a plasma gun that had been kept close to hand on top of the consoles.
‘Hand-to-hand,’ snarled Sammael, drawing the Raven Sword. ‘Do not damage the data terminals.’
One of the Divine grabbed the plasma gun and fired at Sammael, aiming squarely for the Grand Master’s chest. The ball of energy exploded into streamers of blue light as it struck Sammael’s personal field.
‘Praise to the artifices of the Mechanicus,’ he muttered, sweeping the Raven Sword two-handed through the leg of his foe, sending the warrior crashing to the ground. He raised his voice as he stepped over the body and glanced at the terminal where the man had been working. ‘They are deleting the databanks – take them prisoner.’
The instruction was not soon enough to save the life of the foe Harahel had targeted; the Librarian’s force axe swept off the man’s head with a blaze of psychic sparks. One of the Divine scrambled for the doorway opposite the one through which the Ravenwing had entered, snapping off shots with his autogun. He stopped in the alcove, using a cogitator access terminal as cover.
A moment later, the doors wheezed open behind him, revealing the black-armoured form of Daedis. The Black Knight lashed out with the butt of his corvus hammer, cracking the Divine across the back of the neck. The man tipped forwards, helmeted head bouncing from the corner of the console before hitting the floor.
The others were subdued in short order, the last of them losing an arm to the Raven Sword just as Malcifer entered. The Divine fell to his knees, staring at the cauterized stump just below his elbow. Remarkably the man did not go into shock but turned hate-filled eyes on Sammael.
‘Flesh is a prison, oblivion is release,’ snarled the man. He opened his mouth to speak again but Sammael’s boot crashed into his jaw, not hard enough to break bones but sufficient to force the man to the ground, his servo-harness whining in protest as he fell.
The Grand Master pulled off the man’s helm, revealing a square-jawed face, handsome by most standards but for a blistering disfigurement around the left eye which gave the man a squinting appearance. Like the Divine Sammael had encountered earlier, the warrior had scars and lesions across his flesh, and a rash that made his greying skin leathery in patches.
‘What were you deleting?’ Sammael demanded, grasping the captive by the throat.
‘Everything,’ the man replied with a defiant grin. ‘Communications logs, navigation records, everything. You’ll never find him.’
‘Find who?’ Malcifer appeared at Sammael’s shoulder, a skull-faced apparition whose voice was edged with anger. ‘The Overlord?’
The man did not reply but the flicker of his gaze groundwards betrayed his thoughts.
‘Allow me, Grand Master,’ said the Chaplain, grabbing t
he exoskeletal strut that ran from the Divine’s shoulder to elbow on his remaining arm. Malcifer lifted the man to his feet and then twisted, the metal of the harness biting into muscle and bone. ‘Where is he?’
Grunting and grimacing, the prisoner said nothing. There was an insane gleam in his eye. Malcifer turned his attention to the stump of the other arm, cupping the wound in his hand, squeezing slowly. The Divine’s eyelids fluttered and his lips parted as though caught between agony and ecstasy.
‘Pain is an illusion,’ the man moaned. ‘Oblivion is reality.’
Malcifer’s fingers dug into ravaged flesh, causing blood to bubble from the scabbed wound, dripping to the floor in a stream of droplets.
‘His name,’ said Malcifer. ‘What is the Overlord’s true name?’
‘I do not know,’ said the Divine.
‘A lie!’ Malcifer sounded triumphant, and with reason. Sammael’s autosenses had detected the same momentary surge of pulse and flicker in the eyes that had been seen by the Chaplain. The captive certainly knew the name of the Overlord, otherwise he would not have felt the need to deny it.
‘Anovel? Methelas?’ There was another tiny movement at the mention of the second name, a miniscule furrowing of the brow and narrowing of the eyes. Malcifer released his grip and stood up, looking at Sammael. ‘So it is Methelas who masquerades as the Overlord. At least we can confirm that one of the Fallen returned here after Astelan’s departure.’
Sammael nodded and strode over to one of the other Divine. He picked up the warrior, the weight of the exo-harness no effort for the power armour of the Grand Master. Looking closely, Sammael saw that the servo-harness was not just worn like an exoskeleton; some of the bolts and rivets pierced the man’s flesh. Old scar tissue grew around the threads of the bolts, skin fusing with metal like the bark of a tree growing round an obstruction, taking it into itself. Juts of bone, spurs grafted into the servos and joints of the harnesses, linked the man’s nervous system to the machine in a crude imitation of powered armour. Surveying the other prisoners, Sammael saw this was the case with them all. The Divine had allowed the machine skeletons to become part of them.
Sickened, knowing that this had to be the work of the Fallen, Sammael was determined that his hunt would not end in this place. Sammael addressed Harahel and Malcifer across the command channel.
‘Methelas has a plan greater than petty piracy,’ said the Grand Master. ‘Brother-Chaplain, what can you recall of Astelan’s testimony regarding Port Imperial.’
‘There is little detail,’ replied Malcifer. ‘Astelan, Methelas and Anovel took over the principal ship by force and subjugated the group already based at Port Imperial. I think it is not his testimony of Port Imperial that is of import, but what Astelan did at Tharsis.’
‘Enlighten us, brother,’ said Harahel. ‘What happened at Tharsis?’
‘Astelan staged a coup, after freeing the planet of rebels, riding atop the crest of popular opinion to replace the Imperial Commander by force. He then set about creating a cultus personalis about himself, including the creation of a warrior elite, his so-called sacred bands. The parallels are all too clear now that I think on them.’
‘So Astelan and Methelas set about creating societies in some twisted image of the Imperium as it was during the Great Crusade?’ Harahel grabbed the harness of an unconscious Divine and half-lifted her, the woman hanging like a child’s doll in the Space Marine’s grip. If not for the narrower shoulders and wider hips, and the slight protrusion of breasts, she would have been indistinguishable from the men, her arms heavily muscled, wrinkled skin and flesh covered with blisters and sores. ‘Astelan was a heretic, to be certain, but Tharsis and its people were not corrupted. The stench of the Infernal Powers fills this place. The cannibalism, the unnatural hardiness and malady of the Divine, the fanaticism and craving for oblivion point to the basest of corruption.’
‘Perhaps Astelan was not forthcoming in his reasons for the split from Methelas and Anovel,’ said Sammael. ‘We all know that the Fallen are not of one mind or one loyalty. Some are misguided like Astelan, believing their loyalty to the Emperor justified rebellion against the Lion. There are those Fallen wholly corrupted, sworn to the Ruinous Powers in body and soul. And there are those that run the whole spectrum between. Methelas is obviously of the unrepentant persuasion, embracing the dark masters who turned Horus on the Emperor.’
‘It is well that we came here to learn such,’ said Malcifer. ‘If Methelas has some grander scheme, we must anticipate it and stop him.’
‘Let us assemble the facts as we know them,’ said Harahel. The woman in his grasp started to stir, groaning and shaking her head. Fumbling fingers released the strap of her helm, revealing a pinched face and short-cropped black hair. Boils puckered one side of her face, a mess of reddened skin and pus. Distracted for a moment, Harahel rapped the woman’s head with the pommel of his axe, knocking her unconscious again. ‘Methelas has assembled a fanatical army of warriors. He plans to move Port Imperial somewhere else, sacrificing the majority of his force in the process. The Divine are powerful in comparison to the Unworthy, but they are not so strong nor numerous to be effective on their own against a significant opponent. If Methelas has grand ambitions, he cannot achieve them with the Divine alone.’
Sammael nodded, accepting the Librarian’s conclusions.
‘They have been purging the databases of all information that might shed light on their master’s plan,’ said Malcifer, inspecting one of the consoles. ‘It is a self-destructive last spasm of effort to protect their Overlord before succumbing to oblivion. They know that their master’s plan has been thwarted by our arrival, and only his survival remains as a cause. It could take some time to break their will, but it can be done.’
Only the prisoners could answer the questions Sammael wanted to ask; the cogitator banks would be useless. It was all a matter of patience, finding the weakness and dread that every man harboured in the shadows of his soul. Even Space Marines knew fear; fear of failure, loss of honour and defeat. If a Fallen could be broken, the Divine were only a temporary challenge.
Sammael grabbed the wrist of the Divine at his feet, the bars of the harness buckling in his grip. The Grand Master twisted slowly, pulling the man’s arm up and back, rotating the shoulder painfully. Pneumatic pipes split apart, releasing a hiss of vapour as the servo-skeleton struggled to cope with the unnatural movement.
‘Where is Methelas now?’ asked the Grand Master, applying just enough pressure to keep the arm in its socket. ‘Is he aboard the Scar?’
‘Why should I tell you?’ replied the captive. ‘You will kill us anyway. Oblivion is peace.’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Sammael. The man had unwittingly revealed his fear, as all men did sooner or later. The Divine perhaps did not even realise it but Methelas’s creed, his twisted version of the Adeptus Astartes doctrines, had left room for pressure to be applied. It was simply a matter of finding the correct purchase in the captive’s psyche and applying appropriate leverage.
‘Perhaps we will keep you alive,’ said Sammael. ‘We are very good at that. No oblivion, only torment and pain.’
There was hesitation in the captive’s eyes, a brief chink of weakness in his veneer of contempt. Sammael saw his opening, his triumphant glare hidden by his helm.
‘You believe me, do you not?’ Sammael released the man, sending him falling to all fours on the decking. The Grand Master flicked the tip of the Raven Sword across three pipes linking the harness engine to the left side of the Divine, severing the connections. The man slumped sideways, effectively paralysed. ‘We will feed you and water you like a plant, ensuring that you do not die of starvation of dehydration, though you will be forever on the brink of raving thirst and ravaging hunger. Slowly, part by part, your body will fail, but we can fix that as well. Anti-aging treatments and bionics will preserve your physical form, all the while trapping your
soul in a prison of decaying flesh. The Overlord’s gift to you, the toughness and stamina his blessing has brought, will become a curse. When lesser men would die, you will persist, on the brink of the oblivion you seek, able to feel its presence but never to reach out and grasp it.
‘Madness will consume you, eating at your mind moment by moment, day by day, year by year, century by century.’ Sammael could see the fear now, like a living thing trying to break out of the Divine. It writhed in his eyes and contorted his lips, burying its poisonous fangs into his heart and gut. Sammael poured his scorn into his words, feeding the dread, nurturing it to full strength. ‘Yes, centuries will pass and still you will not attain oblivion. This weak, pained flesh will sustain you just enough, so that when insanity comes, there will be a part of you, the part listening to me now, that will survive. You will see the drooling, mewling beast that you have become, slavering in a cell for eternity.’
Sammael parted the other servo cables, hydraulic fluid spraying black across the man’s skin as he slumped face-first into the deck. He was just able to turn his head, one eye gazing up as the Grand Master stepped over the prone warrior. Sammael planted the tip of the Raven Sword a few centimetres from the neck of the man, the blade sliding into the metal of the decking as its powerfield disrupted the molecules of plasteel.
‘Oblivion can be granted so swiftly,’ Sammael said, crouching down, moving the edge of the Raven Sword fractionally closer to the throat of the Divine. ‘The release you crave is moments away, if you but ask for it. A single word will grant your release. No more. Just one word, whispered so that only I can hear it. No one will know, and then oblivion shall claim you.’
‘One word?’ whispered the captive. Hope had pushed aside the fear and Sammael knew that he had broken the man. ‘What word?’
‘Where was Port Imperial to travel?’ asked Sammael. ‘Give me the name of the system and you will be free. Defy me and you will suffer.’