[Blood Angels 04] - Black Tide

by James Swallow - (ebook by Undead)

  The two of them picked their way through the rows of prize relics, ready for the next attack. Still, Rafen found it hard to keep his focus. At the far end of trophy room, the liquid-filled container holding the stolen progenoids Bile had so brazenly displayed to him glowed, light shimmering through it. He dared not hope that the crystalline vial the traitor had stolen from Baal was still there too—he wanted to abandon all caution and run to it, rescue the sacred blood. It took a strong measure of his self control not to give in; Bile was laying a route for them to follow, that was clear. Somewhere a trap was waiting for them, and any breath could trigger it.

  “I do not see him,” Layko whispered, his voice carrying in the quiet. The Crimson Fist moved parallel to the Blood Angel, between racks holding ranks of stolen power armour that stood as mute witnesses to the dishonour of this place. “He cannot flee.” Layko jerked his head up at the roof. “This is the upper tier of the tower, and there are no other exit routes.”

  Rafen nodded and spoke loudly. “My kinsman speaks the truth, traitor. You have nowhere to run. Your xenos pet is dead. The warp is closed to you. Your fortress is about to be overrun. If you can still remember what it means to be an Astartes, show yourself. Meet your fate without cowardice.”

  He was close to the tank now. A few steps more, just a few steps, and he would be able to reach inside and pluck the vial from the bubbling froth. Rafen’s hand clenched and unclenched, and he looked around, trying to see in all directions at once. Almost there.

  Layko had halted. “Blood Angel. Do you see this?” The Crimson Fist bent to examine something. “This is not Astartes issue. The glyphs on the surface… I have seen them before.” He was studying a canister made of black metal, branded with thick Chaos runes. Through vents in the side of the pod, a stew of emerald mist was visible.

  Rafen nodded, his attention on the vial. He was reaching for it. “Cover me, Layko. I must recover this.”

  Both of them heard the creaking. The sound was a familiar one, the sound of ceramite and plasteel turning upon bearings, the working of bunches of artificial myomer muscles beneath the skin of Space Marine power armour.

  With sudden, wild fury, one of the dormant suits that lay at rest upon Bile’s trophy racks exploded into motion, the fierce red eyes of the helmet flashing into life. A mailed power fist, humming with energy, slammed Layko down and Rafen heard the sharp report of snapping bone. Without a moment’s pause, the armoured figure launched itself from the supports and stormed across the metal decking, knocking other cases aside in its headlong rush. Rafen spun away from the fluid-filled tank and brought up the lasgun in his hand.

  It was then that he realised the armoured figure before him was clad in the sanguine red of his own Chapter. The wargear was pockmarked by impact hits, battle-scorched and ragged, but it was every inch the holy plate and mail of a Blood Angel. His hesitation froze Rafen’s finger on the trigger, his mind racing. “Brother?” he called.

  The harsh laughter echoing from the helmet’s vox grille killed that question in a heartbeat. “Not quite,” said Bile.

  Rafen’s rage broke its banks at this, an insult piled atop every other offence the renegade had turned against his Chapter. “You have no right!” he shouted. As Bile crashed towards him, the Blood Angel saw the name of the armour’s true owner etched in gold leaf about the chest plate; Brother Kear.

  “It’s a poor fit, I will agree,” Bile retorted, “but I do not need it for long. I’ll shed this paltry skin as I have so many others.” He swung the power fist and Rafen ducked, the impact smashing another display cabinet to splinters.

  Through his fury, the Blood Angel registered a moment’s sluggishness in Bile’s attack, and he understood the reason immediately. Astartes power armour was not simply a layer of clothes a man could choose to don like a robe or a tunic. To correctly mesh the organic machine of an Adeptus Astartes with the perfect function of his wargear took care, time and hallowed ritual; and if a traitor fiend like Bile attempted such a thing… Rafen imagined that even as they fought, the machine-spirit in Kear’s armour was working against the renegade, struggling to counter his every input.

  His enemy’s conceit, his arrogant need for such a grand piece of theatre, could be turned against him. Rafen had an advantage, no matter how slim, and he would use it.

  In the next second he was caught by a grazing slap from those heavy, armoured fingers, and he stumbled into a support beam, dazed. Rafen spat thick fluid from his lips and coughed. “You… cannot despoil and go unpunished. Every crime you commit is added to the tally! Every offence grants you another lifetime in a traitor’s hell!”

  “Do tell,” Bile said languidly, gathering up a sword from where it had fallen amid the path of his destruction. He examined it, made a swing. “Will you keep spouting this tired old dogma even as you choke on your own blood?”

  “My death will not stop the vengeance of my Chapter!” Rafen shouted back, blasting laser fire at his enemy. “You cannot escape this time! The xenos will rip you apart or our ships will obliterate you! Death is at your throat, turncoat!”

  “Your ships?” Bile laughed, and to hear that hated voice issuing from behind a Blood Angel helm made Rafen’s stomach twist in knots. “How do you think I am going to leave this place?” He came in fast and swung the blade. Rafen instinctively parried with the lasgun and the sword cut it in two, smashing it away in sparking fragments. “What other reason is there for this loathsome masquerade?” Bile gestured at the armour. “Look here. I think you know what this is.” His hand pulled a device from the wargear belt, a thick rod etched with runes in gothic script. One end sported a crystal that blinked red-blue in a complex sequence.

  It was a summoner, an Imperial teleport transponder. Perhaps it had been taken along with Kear’s armour, or perhaps Bile had bartered it from Zellik for some unknown price; it mattered little. The rare archeotech device was encoded with command-level sigils, and correctly manipulated, it could reach through the ether and trigger a ship’s teleportarium to automatically lock on to whomever was its bearer.

  “You hesitated, didn’t you?” said Bile, pushing Rafen back with the point of the sword. “Your brothers will do the same when I appear among them, up there, on your precious starship. Long enough for me to put that to use.” He nodded towards the canister Layko had discovered. “Have you ever seen the effects of rot-bane on human flesh, Blood Angel? It is an ugly, sordid death. I have prepared a special variety, just for your kinsmen. One to which, sadly, they will not share my immunity.”

  “I will not allow it!” Rafen shouted, turning to attack with his bare hands.

  “You have no say in the matter,” Bile replied, and ran the sword into him.

  Rafen bellowed and clutched at the blade as it went into his shoulder. The renegade forced him backward until the sword’s tip emerged from his back and buried itself in the wall. Bile pinned him there, choking and racked with pain.

  “Damn you…” spat the Astartes.

  Disregarding Rafen, the traitor punched through the tank of fluids and snatched the vial of sacred vitae, ignoring the precious progenoids as they spilled out on to the floor. Bile continued to ignore him and worked a control lever. A hidden hatch in the ceiling yawned open, and part of the roof descended to form a ramp.

  Bile gave Rafen a last look and threw him a mocking salute. “Remember what I told you before, Astartes. You have failed. If you had listened to me, the shame would have been all you lived with. Now, you will be a feast for the tyranids.”

  The traitor turned away and climbed the ramp, up towards the cloudy sky and the promise of escape far above.

  Rafen’s blood-slick hands grasped the razor-sharp blade of the sword and tried without success to drag it back through the wound. He gasped, his breath coming in hard, sharp chugs of air. The abuse his enhanced Astartes physiology had gone through in these last few days was a battle campaign’s worth of hurts and injuries, and yet he could not falter, could not rest until his mission was
complete. That, or until death itself came to claim him.

  And death’s touch felt very close at hand for the Blood Angel. Bile had beaten him, time and again, and with each confrontation Rafen felt as if a part of his soul had been chipped away. Defeat was a poison like no other, invidious and corrosive, sapping the morale of good warriors and turning their will to dust. Rafen felt the darkness of it in him at that moment, polluting his resolve.

  No. I will not die here. Not like this.

  “I will not die…” he whispered, fingers slipping as he tried to dislodge the sword. “I will not die here…”

  “Talk is cheap, Blood Angel,” came a slurred voice. “Prove it.”

  Rafen felt the blade shift and blinked. Layko lurched closer, the right side of his face and torso hanging slack, blood streaming from his nostrils. With his good hand, the Crimson Fist yanked hard on the hilt of the weapon and drew it out, freeing his comrade.

  The Blood Angel stifled a cry and staggered forward, barely keeping his balance. “Layko,” he coughed. “I saw the hit… Thought you would not rise again.”

  “Kantor would disown my name if I let such a love-tap fell me,” managed the other warrior. His words were thick with pain. Rafen saw the misted cast of his right eye; Bile’s strike had broken something vital inside the Crimson Fist’s skull, and Layko had to know it. He thrust the sword into Rafen’s hands. “Take it. Must finish this. For Nisos. Vetcha. Others.”

  The Blood Angel weighed the weapon in his grip. Not since he had been a youth, not since a fateful moment in the shadow of Mount Seraph during the trials of initiation, had he felt so damnably weak. So drained of energy and strength. It would be easy to fall here, he realised. Simple to let his wounds overtake him, sink to the ground and allow fate to choose how he died. It would be fitting for one who had… Who had…

  You have failed. The words echoed in his mind, mocking him. If he did no more, then they would be his epitaph.

  That would not stand.

  “Follow me,” he said, and mounted the ramp towards the roof.

  “Close it!” shouted Turcio, flinging himself across the threshold of the circular airlock. A pack of lictor-shark hybrids swarmed up the tunnel behind him, their dark featureless eyes glittering with hunger. Kayne and Kilan put their shoulders to the cogwheel-shaped hatch and rolled it shut; and as the door was a hand’s span from sealing, a scythe of barbed claws rushed through the narrowing gap, whipping back and forth, clawing at the black steel.

  Ajir fired off a three-round burst and clipped the talons, giving the others the time to finish the job. The hatch locked home, and immediately the mottled surface began to echo and distend with heavy impacts from the other side.

  The assembled Astartes, attackers and escapees, paused to catch their collective breath. The tyranids had overrun the lower levels of the fortress and like a rising flood, they were rapidly claiming every corner of the complex for themselves.

  Noxx reloaded his bolter, and without looking up he asked the question that was on all their minds. “Is this where we will make our last stand?”

  Ceris answered, but he seemed distracted. “The hatch will hold them for the moment.”

  “Said that about the fire wall,” Puluo muttered irritably.

  “We are inside the inner sanctum of Fabius Bile,” said Tarikus. “This is his retreat, his laboratory, his house of horrors.”

  Gast was moving warily along the metal gangway, peering through armoured viewing slits into chambers that branched off. “I see cryo-modules. What may be work platforms and operating theatres… Or at least, whatever the archenemy might consider their equivalents.”

  “We need to find Rafen and the others,” said Kayne. “Perhaps together we—”

  “Can do what, lad?” Ajir blew out a breath. “We’ve exchanged one dead end for another. The tyranids are everywhere, and even if we can last out a siege with them crawling across this blighted place, in a few hours Rafen’s standing orders will come into effect. The Gabriel and the Tycho will blast this place to ashes. Even as we speak, the ships are moving to combat range. Soon they’ll engage the gunskulls and the matter will be done, one way or another.”

  Kilan pointed at Tarikus. “I thought his Chapter were the ones who spoke of nothing but death and gloom. My belief in the merry disposition of the Blood Angels is destroyed.”

  “Mock if you will, Raven Guard,” Ajir retorted, “but Sanguinius sires pragmatists.”

  Kilan rose to the open challenge in his words. “Defeatists, more like.”

  “You speak of defeat?” Ajir advanced on the other warrior. “I am not the one who allowed himself to be captured and corralled like a common herd animal—”

  “Do not dare to—”

  “Be silent, both of you!” snapped Noxx. “You forget an important fact. You both talk and act as if you have a choice.” He glared around at all the battle-brothers surrounding him. “Tell me, who here labours under the misapprehension that they will see another dawn? Any of you?” Silence answered him. “You who escaped this prison, you are free, but you are not. We who came to this world in search of a traitor, are free but we are not. All of us share one goal, in this moment. Revenge, and with it the hope we will die well.” Noxx turned his gaze back to Ajir and Kilan. “If you expect to live, then you are greatly mistaken. There is no way out of here. No egress but to death and the Emperor’s Peace.”

  Fabius walked to the lip of the sloped parapet and peered down into the thrashing sea of madness writhing far beneath him. The autosenses of the Blood Angel helmet had proven problematic at first, difficult to put under his control, but at last they were doing as he bid. Bile allowed himself a smile; curious how easy it had come to him, recalling the old mnemonic command-strings to operate the wargear’s subsystems. These were skill sets that had lain dormant for ten thousand years, unearthed now and employed as if it were yesterday. The renegade felt a strange sense of disconnection as he tried to frame the events of the deep past in his mind. The memories did not come easily. Irritated, he dismissed his moment of reverie and concentrated on the present.

  Far below, all across the central pit of his prison and up around the crater walls, a seething mass of tyranid life was engaged in an orgy of destruction. Whatever was left of his test subjects, his modificates and his New Men, were out there somewhere, if not already torn to shreds by the aliens then within moments of death. Hooting and shrieking and snarling, the xenos were mad with anger; his studies of the tyranid species had shown him that they reacted to an invasion of their territory on an instinctive level with a psychotic degree of violence. Any perturbation in their complex sensoria of pheromones—such as, say, the corruption of their death-scent he had turned to his own ends—drove them to the point of madness. Down there, the myriad variant forms evolved in the Dynikan oceans had come ashore to kill everything they found, and obliterate everything that carried the stink of the non-tyranid.

  With the murder of the zoanthrope, the collapse of the aura veil he had laboured so long to construct was the death knell for this secret holdfast. It angered Bile that he was being forced to abandon this place with his work at such a crucial stage. His timetable would be severely disrupted; the project would be set back years, and it would take time to mount a new facility, even using one of the other dozen bases he had concealed about the galactic disc.

  But he had long known that the road to conquest was a slow and steady one. Unlike many of the scions of Chaos Undivided, Fabius Bile understood that patience was as much a weapon as brutality and cunning. He understood the need for care and preparation. Why else would he spread his plans so wide? Why else create an army of his own simulacra, each one indoctrinated to believe that they were the one and only Primogenitor? For the sake of patience; to ensure that even if a fortress fell, as it had today, no single act of interference from the minions of the Corpse-God could destroy his great strategy.

  He would win eventually. It was only a matter of time. Bile glanced down at the
summoner where it hung from his belt. The light code had changed; the device was sending to a ship nearby, the pulses growing stronger as the Astartes vessel drew closer. Bile smiled again, and drummed his fingers on the canister of nerve agent maglocked to his thigh plate. He would enjoy the moment when he arrived aboard the Blood Angels ship, the moment when the gas took the crew and turned their lungs to liquid. Any who were lucky enough to survive that would die at his own hands. Oh yes, he told himself, there will be many kills today.

  Then he heard a heavy tread upon the ramp behind him.

  Rafen and Layko emerged on to the battlements atop the tower, and into the dull glow of the daylight threading down from the clouds. The Blood Angel drew a breath and brought up the ornate sword that had been used to cut him so deeply.

  “I told you,” Rafen snarled. “I will not let you escape.”

  Bile turned, and his shoulders were quaking beneath the armour as he released a callous, braying laugh. “By the Eye, you are tenacious little bastards, aren’t you? But, it seems, without the intellect to know when they have been beaten.” The traitor gave a mocking bow. “Come, then. I await your pleasure. If you are so determined to die at my hands, I will gladly accommodate you.”

  Layko brandished one of his combat blades; the other would not remain in the nerveless grip of his numbed fingers. The Crimson Fist threw the Blood Angel a look. “I regret I cannot do as you asked me before, kinsman. I cannot hold my temper any longer.” He saluted him with the short sword.

  “Layko, wait—” Rafen’s words fell on deaf ears.

  The injured warrior broke into a stumbling run that was more a headlong collapse than it was a controlled attack; yet the Crimson Fist was pushed on by a surge of fury that burned through from his heart, a need that drove him like a missile towards his target.