Dante

by Guy Haley

  ‘My lord, Red Doom and Carnelian Glory inbound with evacuation group. Void war is under control. Captain Asante sent us to reinforce. Standing by for orders.’

  ‘Cleanse and land,’ ordered Dante. ‘Get the mortals off this world!’

  ‘Understood, my lord.’

  The Stormtalons broke off as the heavy transporter swung about and descended over the Anvil of Baal. Heavy clamps slammed into the tank’s side. The transporter burned all engines and took off without landing, Anvil of Baal’s spinning tracks shedding body parts and debris. The Thunderhawks made another pass, then dropped in to land as the circle of tanks drew outwards.

  The Stormtalons swept back and forth, blasting away tyranids in their hundreds. Missiles streaked out from Stormravens waiting to land, targeting leader beasts and the artillery arranging itself in the Fabricae district.

  The pressure on the wall slackened.

  ‘Fall back!’ ordered Dante. He jetted backwards towards the inner perimeter. ‘Abandon the wall before they recover!’

  Still firing, his warriors leapt from the rampart, shooting backwards before turning to run, their power armour lending them speed. Mephiston and Marcellos did not pause in their efforts, unleashing the dreadful blood magic of the Chapter upon the foe even as they cleaved at the enemy. The Sanguinary Guard leapt up and back, covering their infantry brothers where they could. One of Vorlois’ men fell to a bio-blast as he turned to leave the walkway over the gate. Another warrior was buried under a seething knot of hormagaunts. Though the foe were scoured away by bolt and flame, he did not rise again. The Stormtalons swept back and forth across the perimeter until their ammunition was exhausted, then turned and shot away into the sky. The first Thunderhawk, loaded with Militarum soldiers, lumbered up after them.

  ‘Hammer of Angels, withdraw!’ yelled Dante. ‘Prepare for extraction!’

  The Hammer of Angels jerked as its tracks engaged, crushing the bodies of dead tyranids to a paste. It was a plug in a dam; once removed tyranids burst through. The tank’s guns obliterated hundreds, but the beasts were swift, thundering around and past it across the landing zone towards the newer, inner perimeter taking shape about the Astra Militarum tanks. Brothers checked their flight, turned and, shoulder to shoulder, shot round after round into the aliens. Dante flew down and landed among them, his Sanguinary Guard joining him once more. The second Thunderhawk was waiting for the last of the Astra Militarum to emerge. Two Stormravens cooled on the landing apron alongside it. Nearby were lines of black bodysacks, each stamped with the Chapter insignia.

  ‘Squad Vorlois, Ancient Asdornae, Ancient Zorael, you are to leave,’ ordered Dante. ‘Epistolary Marcellos, go with them. Watch over the bodies of the fallen.’

  He strode through furnace-hot engine backwash to the open mouth of one of the Stormravens. Imperial officers were embarking with stiff dignity. Dhrost came out first, his face composed. Showing none of the pain of his wounds or his defeat, he stood to one side as his men filed past.

  ‘General, you must leave,’ said Dante. ‘My brothers shall evacuate as soon as you are away.’ The frantic clatter of bolters accompanied his words. ‘Go with honour.’

  Dhrost walked halfway up the ramp and looked out over the devastated port. ‘I did what I could,’ he said. ‘I leave three million dead men here. I pray it was enough.’

  He saluted Dante and went aboard.

  ‘Get the tank crews out, now!’ shouted Dante. His warriors hammered on tank hulls, having to bodily drag out the Militarum crews from their vehicles. One by one, the guns fell silent, the tanks becoming little more than physical barriers.

  Dante opened a vox-channel to the Blade of Vengeance. ‘Asante, we are away from the wall. Commence bombardment of the city, five hundred-yard range around the port. Expedite the return of Wings of Deliverance. I need that transporter back now.’ He cut the feed before he got an answer, knowing his orders would be obeyed without question.

  Vorlois limped aboard the Thunderhawk, accompanied by the remainder of his men. Others hurried the bodies of the dead on board, watched over by Chaplain Ordamael. Dante cast a regretful look out into the seething mass of tyranids. There were a few bodies he would not be able to take home. The loss of gene-seed and wargear weighed heavy on his heart. Marcellos walked up the ramp without looking back, his pale face grey with the effort of his psychic battles.

  The Dreadnoughts Asdornae and Zorael stepped back into the Stormravens’ carrying claws.

  ‘Get these ships off the ground! Return immediately,’ said Dante.

  Lance beams and macrocannon shells screamed through the atmosphere. Shocked air blasted out around pillars of light. Deafening blasts resounded around the crumbling city. Towers tumbled and more buildings, weakened by days of battle, collapsed around them.

  There were ninety Space Marines left on the ground. Two more trips, if Dante was to extract the rest of his armour. As the three Thunderhawks rose up into the sky flanked by Stormravens and Stormtalons, Dante rejoined the battle line.

  The Thunderhawk transporter returned half an hour later, its escorts again peeling around to strafe the endless hordes. More ships were leaving the war in orbit. A trio of Stormhawks blazed overhead, the muddy crump of their munitions popping deep in the city. The Second and First Companies formed a line shoulder to shoulder around the tanks, so close that nothing could get through. Dante ordered his Stormravens to remain and keep back the larger beasts from the walls. Wings of Deliverance stooped low over Hammer of Angels. Beasts leapt at its sides as it rose up, Hammer of Angels’ weapons still firing, turned around and roared out of sight.

  ‘One more trip for the tanks!’ said Dante, cleaving a tyranid warrior in two. There were several Rhino transports in the port, but he would have to abandon them. He would not leave the Predators.

  Their cordon shrank, pressed back towards the mouth of the control centre. Two more of his warriors died before Wings of Deliverance returned, its metal hide steaming. Sanguine Storm and its sister Desert Fury rode out into the thick of the horde to allow the transporter to pluck them from the ground, the infantry line momentarily bowing out from the building entrance to protect them. The craft rose up, tilting itself from side to side to spill xeno-forms from its flight surfaces, then burned hard to get away, battling through the still-strong winds.

  ‘Report all primary armour assets extracted,’ voxed Karlaen.

  ‘We are finished here!’ replied Dante. ‘All units, retreat to the control centre roof.’

  Falling back by squad, the Blood Angels retreated inside. Karlaen’s Terminators formed an impenetrable phalanx at the rear; the Stormravens came in to form a hollow triangle around the building, spitting fire into the foe. Thus protected, the Blood Angels sealed the gates and ascended the stairs.

  A relentless booming echoed up the stairwell as the tyranids battered at the doors. They had a moment’s respite. Dante stood aside to let his warriors run out onto the open roof of the control centre. The first of the Stormravens broke off and rose up to hover before the roof’s low parapet. Its assault ramp slammed down onto the edge of the building, scraping the rockcrete white as the vehicle was buffeted by the gusting wind. Two below-strength squads thundered aboard, and it took off skywards. The Thunderhawks returned to take most of the rest of the force before the gates gave way. One perching itself on the control centre’s tower, the other flying in circles around the building, both of them firing endlessly at the sea of creatures attacking the building. Karlaen and his men thumped up the stairs backwards, firing at the horrors chasing them. Dante ordered them away, blocking the exit to the roof himself as Karlaen and the battered Archangels made their way to the Thunderhawk crouching on the roof. Once full it took off and the second took its place, while Dante and his honour guard battled hissing bio-forms attempting to force the stairs. Pointed weapon forms clattered off ceramite. The sheer weight of the xenos numbers were forcing them back. The last pair of Stormravens abandoned their defence of the building an
d rose up.

  ‘My lord, we are the last,’ said Mephiston. ‘We must leave.’

  Dante looked at the press of creatures shoving and bristling before him. For every one his men cut down with their Angelus bolters, there seemed to be a dozen more. Dante hated them; he hated their endless hunger, their primal need to devour everything. They were utterly alien, inimical to all life. His fury rose in him, his lips peeling back from long fangs, twisting into a savage countenance at odds with the perfect outrage of the mask he wore. The pulse of his blood sang shrilly in his ears.

  The engines of the Stormravens shrieked in the air.

  ‘Now, my lord!’ repeated Mephiston. He grabbed the Chapter Master by the arm and hauled him back. Eyes glowing, the Librarian cast a wall of force into the creatures filling the stairs, flinging them backwards.

  ‘We leave! Now!’ said Dante, shaking off his anger.

  From Mephiston’s back rose a pair of crimson wings. The Sanguinary Guard ignited their jump packs. With aliens snapping at their heels, the last Blood Angels on Asphodex rose up into the open bays of their transports. Bolt-rounds from the Stormravens shepherded them all the way, bursting creatures that in their idiot single-mindedness still leapt to snag the Space Marines from the air only to plunge to their deaths on the rockcrete landing aprons two hundred feet below.

  Commander Dante stood at the lip of the ramp of the Stormraven. It rocked from side to side in the heavy winds, buffeted further by the titanic overpressure unleashed by the magma cannon shells demolishing the city. He looked across a lost world. Below he left sixteen ancient vehicles, a suit of irreplaceable Terminator armour and the bodies of six of his men and their gene-seed. Under his perfect golden helm, his mouth twisted with inexpressible fury.

  ‘Asante, I am away from the planet. Send the tyranids one final gift – level Phodia. Open every gun port. Empty the magazines. I want nothing but the grit-filled flesh of their own kind left behind for the Devourer to enjoy.’

  The Stormraven rose up as the city erupted into a cataclysm of fire. The light of it played over Sanguinius’ perfect face until the assault ramp hissed shut, and the Stormraven turned its prow heavenwards.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE DESERTS OF BAAL SECUNDUS

  456.M40

  The Great Salt Waste

  Baal Secundus

  Baal System

  The night Luis’ mother died was the last his father smiled. When they packed her and her stillborn son in the salt, something broke in Arreas. Luis sensed it go, a give of tension so slight it was naught but a whisper. Arreas was as wise and as kind to his son as he had ever been, but a stoniness came over him. Arreas no longer spoke of angels, nor did he show his son wonders, only how to survive and dig the salt.

  Years passed one after another, the rolling of the sun over the ravaged face of Baalfora quickening as Luis aged. Grand Eclipses came and went, storms, raids by other clans. The work of staying alive filled every hour, only now Arreas did it without hope or joy. He lived to preserve his son’s life, not his own. He saw nothing lovely in the world any more, and seemed impatient that Luis learn how to endure it so that he might leave it behind.

  Whether Arreas’ sorrow had any bearing on Luis’ decision to attempt the trial is hard to say. Perhaps he would have gone if his mother had lived, perhaps not. His father warned him often enough that to attempt the trial was tantamount to a death sentence. Arreas, fearful of losing his last family, meant to frighten Luis, but all it did was stiffen the boy’s resolve. By the time he was eleven years old, as the adepts might reckon it, the news came out that the heralds of the angels were abroad. A trial was imminent.

  Luis kept nothing from his father, and told him his intention as soon as he was sure of his own resolution. It did not matter that the reaction he got was exactly as he’d expected; there was something honest and pure in Luis from the very beginning, and he did not wish to deceive his father.

  He agonised for an age about how to tell Arreas. In the end, he blurted it out while his father prepared dinner in their cramped roamer.

  ‘The sky chariots have been sighted. The heralds of the angels speak to the crowds in Kemrender and Selltown. The Time of Challenge is here. The angels will judge the worthy at High Summer.’ Luis cringed at the pompous wording, delivered in his warbling boy’s voice. The effect was altogether ridiculous.

  ‘You can’t do it,’ said his father without drawing breath. He continued to methodically slice the scorpion biltong for their meal. ‘I won’t allow it. You’re the only family I have left. Who will I leave the roamer to?’ He glanced over his shoulder, those pale eyes pits of misery. ‘Who will continue our line?’

  This was the reaction Luis had anticipated, and he was prepared. ‘Take another wife,’ said Luis. ‘Have more children. Da, I must do this.’

  ‘You’re too young. What do you know about wives?’ said Arreas. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his skinny arm. It was always oven-hot in the roamer, and he was tired. The sores on his cheek had blossomed into slow cancers. Death’s bright fruiting, mottled red and purple. ‘I’m too old. I’ve not got long. If we want to talk about wives, we should talk about yours. What about that?’ he said. His levity forced. ‘That Malina is nice. She’s your age. I’ve seen her looking at you. She needs someone – they’ve four children in that family. She’ll need somewhere to live. She could live here, with you. It’s an arrangement that’ll work for everyone.’

  ‘It will not work for me. I will take no wife,’ said Luis.

  ‘Then you’re being selfish,’ said Arreas. ‘Every boy that throws his life away for a dream of angelhood weakens the clan. You’d be an asset here, dead out there.’

  ‘Not trying is selfish,’ said Luis. His own temper responded to his father’s. The change from boy to man had begun. He was getting bigger, more stubborn, swifter to fury. Twenty thousand years on Baal Secundus could not alter puberty’s fundamental biology. His voice rose. Under the pattern of sunburn on his face, he flushed. ‘If I stay here, I can help Malina maybe. If I become an angel, I can help everyone.’

  Arreas set the knife down and bowed his head. ‘If, if, if!’ he said. ‘You will die.’ He turned around and leaned against the tiny kitchen work surface. ‘What makes you so special? Why do you think you can do it?’

  ‘Why don’t you believe in me?’ yelled Luis.

  Arreas winced. Their voices carried. Their rows had become frequent. The others in the clan made jokes about it. ‘Luis, you’re small, you’re not strong and you’re young. But most of all, you’re too kind. To be an angel, to fight those wars… What kind of men do you think make such warriors? You have your mother’s heart – always you put others before yourself. Your mercy will kill you.’

  ‘Kindness is no vice.’

  His father shrugged. ‘Not in a husband, but it is in a warrior.’

  ‘Then I shall be stern yet merciful.’

  Arreas sighed and took the knife up again. ‘Maybe when you are a few years older. You can try the next trial. You’ll be stronger then.’

  ‘It will be too late.’ With an effort of will beyond his years, Luis calmed himself. ‘The trial happens once in a generation. I will be a man the next time it comes. I have to do it now, Da.’

  For a moment Luis thought his father might relent. The hard set of his mouth softened and he regarded his son with tenderness.

  ‘No,’ said his father firmly, his frown returning. ‘I can’t lose you as well,’ he added quietly. ‘Now get ready, work starts soon.’ He bundled up their lunch in cloth and stepped out into the dangerous morning, leaving the door to bang against the frame.

  The best salts were deepest in the Great Salt Waste. The more easily accessible deposits had been dug up millennia ago, so the caravan of roamers veered away from the edges of the waste, heading to the very heart where the sun blasted the earth with unremitting wrath. They settled into a months-long routine of loading up the hauler with precious potassium nitrates and lithium
salts, then making the long journey to Kemrender where they sold their cargo to the processors in their rusting factory fort, then heading back again. A profitable route, but far away from the city Angel’s Fall and the Place of Choosing.

  Every evening, Luis watched the sky nervously. Baal and its moons inched closer to the Duplus Lunaris that began High Summer. The time when Baalfora and Baalind edged out from the shelter of their brother to confront one another was coming. Each moon becoming completely visible to the other was the signal for the commencement of the trials.

  Days turned to weeks. Baalind crept further out into the sky. Luis weighed his father’s words; he was small, it was true, and undeveloped. But his body was changing quickly. He would be too old to be accepted if he waited, for the angels of blood took only boys with them into the sky, not men. He agonised on his decision, but made no further mention of it to his father. The boy and the man did not speak much; their relationship became tense, but such is the impact of adolescence. Arreas thought his son had yielded to his wishes, and slept sounder.

  They were halfway to Kemrender when Luis left home for good.

  The caravan route moved the closest it would get to Angel’s Fall. The journey would be a long one across merciless salt pans, but some chance was better than no chance. Luis thought bitterly that it would serve his father right if he died because he had kept the easier road from him.

  Such thoughts are unworthy of an angel, and Luis put them aside, praying to the Emperor and Sanguinius in the niche of the family shrine for forgiveness. For the last days, he was warm to his father, and Arreas’ misery lifted a little.

  As necessity and the tradition of such things dictated, Luis departed in the middle of the night.

  Luis spent his last evening with the caravan in conversation with his father. He kept him up late purposefully, then waited for Arreas to fall asleep.

  Luis crept out from under his bedclothes silently and pulled on his day clothes. Each movement of the roamer or jingle of a buckle made him stop, teeth clenched, but his father remained deeply asleep. His snores rumbled through the roamer. The tribe had been working all day at a rich deposit, and they were all exhausted. Nerves lent Luis energy. He hoisted his salt pack onto his back. Made of carefully hoarded leather to carry the big slabs of salt from the beds to the hauler, it made a fine haversack. Inside were his meagre belongings: as much water as he could carry, his rad suit, knives, rad-ticker, tinder stick, sleeping roll, water still and dried scorpion meat saved from weeks of meals. The water was the most important.