The Unforgiven

by Gav Thorpe

  Annael said nothing as another thought entered his mind. He looked at the sparkle of rift cannon hits, like droplets of water hitting the surface of the pool. They made a tiny impact and then dispersed, becoming one with the opening.

  It was hard not to think of himself as one of those droplets, falling onto the Dark Angels, briefly existing and then dissipating into the mass. He tried to remember what it had been like when he had been a Scout, or a warrior in the Fifth Company. It was a blur.

  There had been duty. And honour. Dedication to his brothers.

  All of that had changed the day he had asked how the Lion had died. A simple question, answered with a lie. That much he had learned in the short time since becoming a warrior of the Ravenwing. Horus had not killed the Lion, as Malcifer had taught him. The Chaplain had later recanted this assertion, and told the Black Knights that the Dark Angels had turned on themselves.

  Another lie?

  It was impossible to say. It certainly was not the whole truth, of that Annael was certain. He could look up and see a world embattled. A world he was convinced had to be Caliban. Not a myth, not a hallucination, but ancient Caliban ten thousand years in the past, the tear in space linking two realities separated by ten millennia.

  What had the Dark Angels achieved since that disastrous day in the last throes of Horus’s uprising? What had he achieved? He had propagated the lie to his battle-brothers, and fought to deceive others.

  Methelas, Anovel, Astelan, Cypher. The Chaos ships overhead duelling with the combined fleet of the Unforgiven. They were all connected, everything was a web of falsehood, betrayal and deception, interlinked in ways he could not imagine. He knew he would never understand it. He would be lied to again, and he would believe the lies. He had no choice. To think otherwise, to move against the will of the Chapter, would be the destruction of the Dark Angels.

  This was the loss of honour, the burden of the Black Knight. To accept the shame. To accept the lies as the better of the two alternatives. There had been one occasion when Malcifer had not lied to him. Deeds mattered. The inner failure had to be masked by outer success. As a Black Knight, he was a foundation stone in the teetering edifice that was the Unforgiven. A resolute brick, that would take the weight and not shift. To do other than that risked the fates of all the sons of the Lion.

  It was not his place to fight history nor shape the future.

  A droplet on the pool. Inconsequential. A passing moment.

  No more. He could bear the burden not a second more. Shame, not of Malcifer’s teachings, but of a deeper sense of honour and duty, burned his soul. Was it weakness to succumb to the pressure? Or was it strength to break free of the shackles of his peers?

  It did not matter. Deeds mattered.

  ‘We need a bigger stone,’ he told Sabrael. ‘Sorry, my brother. My friend. It seems I must rob you of the title of chief idiot.’

  He hit the thruster controls, the Dark Talon bursting forward, accelerating hard. The scanners could not tell him where the immaterial and the material overlapped. Annael closed his eyes, trusting to his own instinct, to the repulsion of his mortal form to the immortal world he was about to enter.

  While the Dark Talon powered into the breach, Annael disengaged the containment power feeds, turning the core beneath him into an unshielded warp engine.

  His stomach turned somersaults and the pressure in his head threatened to burst his ears and snap his spine. Time slowed as he passed the threshold of the real and unreal. Now was the moment.

  Annael pulled the trigger of the rift cannon.

  A World Broken

  The air in Tuchulcha’s hall shimmered, pulsing with light and dark until it formed an image, a window into the void beyond the Rock. Azrael looked around and saw that behind him were dozens of small hooded figures. Scores of Watchers in the Dark lined the walls, all regarding him with glowing red eyes.

  Ezekiel was intent upon the vision, his force blade Traitor’s Bane still bare in his hand, a witchglow emanating along its length.

  ‘Impossible,’ said the Librarian, shaking his head.

  Azrael looked more closely. He could see the huge rent in space that hung over the remnants of Caliban, and through the tear a battle raged for another world.

  ‘Is that…?’ he asked.

  ‘It is as I promised,’ croaked Tuchulcha’s avatar, limbs twitching as the old man rose to his feet. ‘Caliban. The Lion’s sons war upon themselves. Your primarch and Luther are about to do battle. You could reach through and touch them. Which would you save?’

  ‘The Lion, of course,’ Azrael said without thought. His body trembled at the prospect. Ten thousand years of dishonour and pain, all of it wiped from history by a simple act. ‘Save the Lion. Save Caliban.’

  He felt a wave of discontent. Castigation flowed around him from the Watchers, but he ignored it. The Supreme Grand Master fixed his gaze upon the marble and gold sphere.

  ‘Can you do it? Will you do it?’

  ‘No!’ roared Ezekiel, the Traitor’s Bane scything through Tuchulcha’s meat puppet, cleaving it from shoulder to groin. Like a dry husk, it fell to the earth in two pieces, a dribble of thin blood leaking from severed veins and arteries. ‘Do not listen to its lies!’

  ‘What have you done?’ snarled Azrael, turning on the Chief Librarian, the Sword of Secrets in his hand. ‘You have doomed us all!’

  ‘We are not the only ones that can move through the opening,’ said Ezekiel, taking a step back, his gleaming sword held down to his side. ‘Look!’

  Azrael glanced at the void-vision. At first he saw nothing, just the distant glitter of orbital weapons and the flare of torpedo launches. Then he spied a pair of bright blue dots. The engines of a Thunderhawk. He followed it for several seconds, and then moved ahead, following its trajectory into the edge of the warp break. There was only one gunship in the area.

  ‘Cypher?’

  He saw no sign of the Black Knights he had despatched with the traitor. The asteroid to which they had been sent had broken apart it seemed, but of their fate he could see nothing.

  ‘The Plagueheart is moving…’ Ezekiel’s whisper betrayed an unease Azrael had never heard from his companion before. It unsettled him to think that the imperturbable Chief Librarian was worried. ‘Astelan is there. I can feel him now, his thoughts of glory unfettered by the approach of victory.’

  ‘We must hurry,’ said Azrael, looking at Ezekiel. ‘We have to block the breach. Move the fleet and the Rock to stem the tide until we can break through.’

  The Supreme Grand Master started to pace, eyes locked on Tuchulcha. ‘You cannot speak but you can still understand me. I need you to m–’

  ‘Say no more!’ Ezekiel swung his blade at Azrael’s chest. Instinct caused the Lord of the Rock to raise the Sword of Secrets to block it. As the two blades clashed, the Supreme Grand Master looked into the psyker’s eye, feeling himself drenched in golden energy.

  Tell it nothing! Ask it nothing! It is cursed. Brother, we cannot save the Lion. It is not to be. The portal must be closed to stop the others. What if Astelan succeeds and brings back a Legion of the Fallen? What if Typhus spoke the truth and some even greater power seeks to be returned?

  ‘No, we must try,’ said Azrael, but already the strength was seeping from him. He swallowed hard and looked at the vision. Caliban was wreathed in las-fire and explosions, but all he saw was the lands of his gene-father in flames.

  Azrael slumped to one knee, head bowed, the Sword of Secrets falling from his fingers. He shot one last look at the vision and then turned his face away.

  ‘What do we have to do?’ he asked Ezekiel.

  ‘Fight fire with fire. The warp with the warp.’

  Azrael nodded and activated the vox.

  ‘Command, this is Lord Azrael, I want an immediate signal transfer to all void assets.’ He received an affirmative
and then heard the short tone as his war-plate’s transmitter was siphoned into the massive broadcast arrays of the Tower of Angels. ‘All Dark Talon flights, all Chapters, this is a priority recall. All Dark Talons, I have a priority mission. Target rift cannons at dimensional instability centred on the Caliban nominal point. All Dark Talons that are able, you must target the opening breach. We must overload the tear before it engulfs us all.’

  A sense of approval washed over him from the Watchers in the Dark, a sensation more heartening, more encouraging than any words could make possible. He stood and retrieved his sacred blade, and sheathed it as he stepped next to Ezekiel. The two of them watched in silence as Dark Talons from across the fleets converged on the warp breach.

  For several minutes the Dark Talons bombarded the opening with their rift cannons, but there seemed to be little visible effect. The Plagueheart was just a few thousand kilometres from the breach, ploughing into the hastily reassembled fleet commanded by Dane.

  ‘It isn’t working,’ Azrael said, looking at Ezekiel. ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ admitted the Chief Librarian. ‘We have been tricked. Tuchulcha never intended to allow us back through the breach, and now we are too far away for the Rock to intervene.’

  Azrael could not accept this, and stared at the apparition of the void battle as though his thoughts alone could close the rippling gap between universes. In his frustration, he almost missed another Dark Talon flitt­ing across the void-gap. It had come from a different direction to the others and was accelerating hard.

  Ezekiel took a step forward, hand stretching out towards the psychic display as if he might reach into it and snatch what he sought. His good eye widened with shock, sparks of gold erupting from his pupil.

  ‘Brother Annael,’ growled the Librarian. ‘His warp core is exposed.’

  Azrael did not fully understand as he darted a look back towards the ongoing event. A moment later a bright star burst into life at the heart of the breach. It looked as though it might flare and die out like the shots of the rift cannons, but it endured. After a second it had stabilised, like a shell hanging in the air.

  After two seconds it started to grow. Lightning of all colours snaked across the reality tear, crackling out into the void and inward towards lost Caliban.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Azrael demanded, not able to move his eyes from what was unfolding in the vision.

  ‘The breach is feeding upon itself, imploding from both directions.’ The Librarian pointed at Tuchulcha. The surface of the sphere was almost completely golden now, swirling madly with smears of scarlet. ‘The bridge is collapsing.’

  In the depths of the breach Azrael could see Caliban wracked by warp energy. The storm unleashed by the disintegrating warp breach coruscated across the atmosphere of the world. Ships were set ablaze and orbital stations turned to dust.

  ‘No!’ he screamed, realising what he was witnessing.

  Caliban was breaking apart.

  Fronds of swirling power vomited from the closing breach, like solar flares of green and purple and white. They lashed at the void shields of the closest ships, detonating in sparks of yellow. The energy within the breach was being expelled as both sides of the gateway sealed, looking for release in the present as well as the past.

  ‘Tuchulcha!’ he bellowed. ‘Get us away from here!’

  The sphere’s colours whirled enigmatically in reply.

  ‘I command you. Get us away. Get everyone safely away from the breach.’

  A flutter of red and gold might have approximated a smile or might have been a random confluence of the shifting patterns on the warp device’s surface. Regardless, half a second later Azrael heard the warp sirens screaming across the upper levels of the Rock.

  The vision of the void showed him an impossible explosion of shapes and colours for an instant before it vanished. Another second and Nakir was barking in his ear.

  ‘Another mass translation, Lord Azrael! What is happening? Where is the rest of the fleet?’

  Azrael looked to Ezekiel for an answer. The Grand Master of the Librarius held out a hand, slowly circling from left to right until he had turned fully about.

  ‘Safe,’ the Librarian replied after several seconds, his eye dimming as he ended his scan of the warp around them. ‘Scattered, but safe. So are the Plagueheart and the Terminus Est. Tuchulcha took you literally. It saved everyone. Boarding forces have been returned to the Rock as well.’

  ‘Stand down from general alert, Chapter Master,’ Azrael told Nakir. ‘I will be joining you shortly.’

  He felt a faint urging in the back of his mind and saw that the doors to the chamber were open. He walked out into the corridor with Ezekiel, his feet almost moving of their own volition. Stepping onto the worn flags of the passage, he looked back. The Watchers had surrounded Tuchulcha, the blackness of their robes appearing to rise up like a shadow around the strange device.

  The doors shut with a slam before he saw anything else. He looked at Ezekiel, seeking an answer, but his companion simply shook his head. When Azrael turned back to the chamber of Tuchulcha, there was no sign of the great doors, only the unbroken stone of the Rock’s deep corridors.

  He felt sick, in a way his altered physiology should never have felt. A spiritual malaise that all his genhancements and doctrinal lessons could not suppress. He took off his helm and gulped in the stale air of the passageway, his mind whirling as he tried to process everything that had happened.

  Secrets And Lies

  They came together without the need for a command to be issued. The Hidden Masters, Azrael’s closest confidants, gathered in the Hidden Chamber over the course of the following hours. They did not speak at first, but waited for the Supreme Grand Master to initiate the discussion. Azrael was not sure where to begin. Amongst the others only Ezekiel knew of the strange presence in the bowels of the Rock and the Lord of the Dark Angels was not willing to spread the knowledge further.

  ‘Cypher has escaped,’ he told them.

  ‘How?’ demanded Asmodai. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It does not matter,’ Azrael said sternly. ‘It is the eighth time such an event has happened, we should not be surprised.’

  ‘And what do we say to the rest of the Inner Circle?’ asked Sapphon.

  ‘He escaped his cell during the Death Guard attack. The details are unknown.’

  ‘He disappeared into the breach, it seems,’ added Ezekiel. ‘I might contend that he is dead, or was cut off when it sealed, but Cypher’s history shows us that he is not so easily disposed of. Better that we tell the others that the Hunt continues and Cypher remains at large. It is probably true.’

  ‘The same is true of Astelan,’ said Azrael. ‘Though I cannot say for sure, it seems that he might have used the expedition to Ulthor to make contact with the followers of the Dark Gods. He had his own agenda to fulfil, supported by the unholy power of that lost world. We can be sure that Astelan will continue to seek to hurt us whenever opportunity presents itself.’

  ‘Much has happened today that will require answers for the battle-brothers. They have seen things that defy belief,’ said Belial, the words almost a confession of his own discomfort. ‘The same is true of the other Chapters that assisted us.’

  ‘I will host a conclave and the matter will be discussed with the Chapter Masters. The masters of the Chaplains will devise a suitable programme of dedications and collective penances to ensure the Chapter tenets remain instilled in our warriors. The First and Second Companies have suffered much of late. Belial, Sammael, you will see that your ranks are replenished by the most suitable candidates from those that voice the gravest concerns. It will be arduous but normality will be restored.’

  ‘As ever it has been,’ replied the captain of the Second Company. Belial silently nodded in acceptance of the order.

  Nobody said anything for almost a
minute, before Sapphon broke the silence.

  ‘What actually happened?’ He looked at the others, who shared his confusion. ‘Some of this I can piece together, but much seems nonsensical.’

  They exchanged glances and all eyes settled on Azrael.

  ‘A plot by the corrupted followers of Chaos, led by dread Typhus,’ answered the Supreme Grand Master. ‘They sought to bring forth an army of abominations from the warp. We thwarted them. It is as simple as that.’

  ‘Rarely are matters of Chaos simple,’ said Asmodai.

  ‘There is nothing further to be said,’ replied Azrael with a hint of a snarl. ‘We came close to the brink of annihilation but thanks to the bravery of those here and across the Chapters we successfully defended the Imperium from disaster. Battle honours for Caliban will be issued as required.’

  The officers looked far from satisfied by this explanation but knew that they would get nothing further from their lord. One by one they paid their respects with bows and departed, until Azrael was left with Ezekiel.

  ‘A three-way battle for Caliban’s past,’ said the Lord of the Rock. ‘And none of us were victorious.’

  ‘Four forces battled today,’ the Librarian corrected. ‘The device itself and whatever purpose it serves. Thankfully it was also thwarted.’

  ‘Can you make much sense of what it was trying to do? What it claimed?’

  ‘Very little, brother,’ admitted Ezekiel. ‘Perhaps it is better that we do not understand. It would only invite further difficulties.’

  Azrael felt sick at the thought and knew that his account in the journals of the Supreme Grand Masters would be brief and unhelpful. He wondered about the previous entries concerning Cypher, their content and tone terse. There was much that was left unsaid and he had nothing to offer hope to his successors. Better that the entire episode was forgotten, lest a weak soul in the future think that they could wield Tuchulcha again. That, Azrael was certain, would be calamitous.

  ‘Am I right? Did I witness what I thought I did?’ he asked his companion, his voice a whisper. ‘The destruction of Caliban. The scattering of the Fallen. The cause of our shame.’