Dante

by Guy Haley

  ‘Let me go!’ bellowed Arvin. ‘I shall crush their corpses, set their maimed bodies about this place! They will know fear! I will destroy them all!’

  ‘Emperor’s Throne!’ snarled Basileus. ‘He will not calm. Hold him still!’ he said. Basileus took out his combat knife and went to the dead orreti.

  ‘What ails him?’ said Lorenz.

  ‘It is the rage – the Black Rage has him!’ said Giacomus.

  ‘It is not the rage. It is the Red Thirst,’ said Basileus thickly, his control steadying the others. ‘It has him in its grip as it has me in its grip. I have the measure of my own passions, that is all.’

  ‘We have all experienced the thirst!’ shouted Giacomus. ‘It has never been like this. I don’t understand.’

  ‘Then you have much to learn. There is only one medicine for this ailment. Get his helmet off.’ With evident disgust he searched around an alien neck, then bent and cut once with his knife. He cupped his hand under the wound, filling it with the purple blood. Lorenz and Giacomo pinned Arvin’s arms while Ristan grappled with his thrashing head. Finally, Ristan got his fingers into the release catches at the top of the soft seal and yanked off Arvin’s helm.

  Their brother had gone. A monster had taken his place. The veins throbbed on Arvin’s neck and face. His alabaster skin had turned crimson, his eyes bulged, and their whites had reddened. His bared teeth snapped at the arms of his brothers, his fangs fully extended.

  ‘Hold him!’ said Basileus. Careful not to spill the precious liquid, the sergeant brought his hand close to Arvin’s mouth.

  ‘Drink! Drink the vitae. Let it slake your thirst, brother,’ said Basileus.

  Arvin let out a strangled howl. Basileus jammed the blade of his palm into Arvin’s mouth, forcing his teeth wide. Arvin’s fangs squeaked on ceramite.

  ‘Drink!’ commanded Basileus.

  Blood slopped into Arvin’s mouth. His thrashing calmed. With desperate laps he licked up the blood from Basileus’ hand. Lorenz, Ristan and Giacomus stepped cautiously back.

  Arvin’s face had lost its horrible red colour. He licked frantically at the alien blood, eyes dilated.

  ‘He is blood drunk,’ said Giacomus.

  ‘He will calm now,’ said Basileus, his face and voice hardly less savage than Arvin’s.

  The young Space Marines looked hungrily on the blood, their own thirsts stirring.

  Basileus looked at them. ‘It is affecting you too. It is the way of our Chapter that when one falls to the thirst, many follow. All of you, drink, quickly! Drink for the victory you have achieved. Drink for the glory of the Imperium! Drink for the memory of Sanguinius! Partake of the communion of blood. Wash away your savagery. Rediscover restraint, and through it seek forgiveness for this lapse.’

  They had never partaken of such a libation, not in these circumstances. Blood and the drinking of blood were sacred to their Chapter, but it was always done under the watchful eyes of the Sanguinary Priests. Gingerly at first, they knelt by the alien body and removed their helms. Lorenz was first to kiss the alien’s hide. His face wrinkled with disgust at the touch of it on his lips even as his skin reddened in anticipation. Dante followed. The leathery flesh was still warm. Despite his abhorrence, his mouth watered. His fangs extruded themselves fully from his gums, piercing the skin. Spiced, xenos blood trickled into his mouth, spurring his appetite. With increasing need, he sucked at the wound, dragging in mouthfuls of the stuff. Fragments of alien memory spilt through his mind as he drank of its soul, his omophagea snagging bits of the dead creature’s life.

  He knew the orreti then. They were wanderers, their world dead. They had never been numerous, and were in the twilight of their kind. He felt their sadness, and their pain. They were not aggressive creatures, but carrion feeders, living off the leavings of the galaxy. Dante did not care. Blood was all there was. Their sorrowful story was submerged in a tide of red.

  He tasted the creature’s death. Its fear broke the hold of the thirst over him, and he snatched his head back.

  Dante took a long, shuddering breath. He blinked, back in himself again. The stolen life of the alien coursed through his body, and he saw his fellows with clear eyes. Giacomus lapped blood from the ground. Lorenz sucked at its arm. Ristan had his face buried in the creature’s chest like a beast-pup at the teat.

  What have we become? he wondered. But the thought was fleeting in the face of the thirst. The smell of vitae had his mouth watering. His reason retreated, and he returned to the corpse.

  There was blood to be drunk; mercy be damned.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  BLACK RAGE

  518.M40

  Holywell Hive

  Tobias Halt

  Halt System

  ‘This is Dante! Requesting urgent support! We’re cut off!’ Laziel was a dead weight on his arm, his armour streaked a wetter red from his brother’s wounds. Dante pushed him on. His brother stumbled, his ragged breathing amplified by his vox-grille.

  A power-armoured figure stepped into the end of the corridor, its defaced iconography streaked with rust and undercity filth. Dante fired one-handed and shot its hearts full of bolt-rounds. The mass-reactives blew, their explosions contained by the renegade’s armour plating, and he fell down dead.

  ‘This is Dante, can anyone hear me?’ He moved on, dragging Laziel to his feet, glancing back over his shoulder. More traitors were filling the corridor. Bolt-rounds crackled off broken sheets of plasteel hanging off the walls.

  Several whined off his armour. One exploded on his plastron, the detonation making the battleplate shiver.

  ‘Laziel, get up!’ shouted Dante. He fired back at the traitors, emptying his bolter at them.

  ‘I… I… can’t,’ he said. ‘I’m… I…’ He sagged against the wall.

  The renegades advanced, guns up, through the cramped corridor. Their pauldrons scraped rust from the decaying walls. Small flies swarmed around yellow lumens set into the ceiling. A sense of dankness prevailed, though they were high in the atmosphere of Tobias Halt, well above the oceans.

  Dante braced himself, but the traitors did not fire. ‘They want our gene-seed,’ Dante snarled. Anger rose up in him. The pounding of his hearts became war drums. Before he could consider his actions, he was running at them, chainsword growling. He slammed into the first, rocking the fallen angel back on his feet.

  ‘Traitor! Traitor!’ he yelled in the Space Marine’s face.

  The warrior was knocked back, contacting with his fellows. A combat knife scraped a bright furrow across Dante’s chest eagle. Dante elbowed his foe hard in the face, cracking his retinal lenses and staggering him further. The Purge, they called themselves – once loyal, now filthy acolytes of the god of plague. Their armour was painted green around the greaves and shoulders, black elsewhere. He reversed his chainsword and drove it point first through the traitor’s chest. Blood fountained over him as the warrior died. Dante wrenched his weapon free.

  The traitor following the slain renegade fired at Dante. Bolts exploded on his armour. Warning runes flashed all over his display, but he paid them no heed. The Traitor Space Marine continued firing at Dante until his chainsword took the warrior’s hand and gun off at the wrist. He took his blade and sawed up lengthways through the enemy’s helm. Black blood spurted from his ruined respirator grille.

  Dante sprang forwards off the corpse, kicking a second foe hard in the leg, denting his armour and sending him off balance. Then he decapitated him. His sword snagged in the traitor’s armour, and so he threw himself at the third warrior, screaming incoherently. The Red Thirst rose up through him, drowning his soul in a tide of bloody rage. His weight bore the traitor down, his hands locked about his neck. He buried his fingers in the vulnerable joint, pushing so hard his hands pierced metal softseal and flesh alike. The traitor smashed at Dante, making his faceplate display fizz, but he did not relent. With a final, crushing grip, he choked the life from the traitor, and tore his helmet off.

  The warri
or looked not so different to Dante, his face distorted in the same transhuman way, although he lacked Sanguinius’ beauty. Dante wondered what primarch had given this creature its gifts. It enraged him that supposedly loyal Adeptus Astartes would turn to Chaos. His fangs slid from his gums. He wished to feast on this thing, and steal the secrets of its mind.

  He opened his filters preparatory to removing his helmet. The rotten stink of the traitor’s blood stopped him. It smelt rancid.

  Dante stood back, his thirst receding but not quenched. It could never be quenched.

  He went to the struggling Laziel and dragged him up again. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We have to keep moving.’

  Dante helped his brother through the network of tunnels. Everywhere there were the emaciated corpses of citizenry. The Purge had occupied Tobias Halt and begun to systematically starve the inhabitants to death. Millions had died. Some of the bones they saw bore signs of butchery, inflicted as the desperate inhabitants resorted to cannibalism.

  The hive shook to explosions, hivequakes following in their wake as the mountain-sized city shifted. At any moment he expected the whole edifice to collapse on them, but it held. His calls for aid went unheard.

  ‘We have gone too deep,’ Laziel gasped. ‘They cannot hear us.’

  ‘Then we must get nearer to the hive skin,’ said Dante. They were on the brink of a shaft that disappeared into darkness a thousand metres below them. Distant gunfire rattled down towards them from above. Dante struggled to orient himself. Holywell Hive was six kilometres wide.

  ‘Which way is it?’ he said.

  Laziel leaned against the wall. His armour leaked blood and machine fluids in equal amounts. The breaks in his armour were sticky with foaming shock gels. He wheezed painfully. Dante suspected at least one of his lungs had been punctured. ‘Ask her,’ said Laziel. He pointed.

  Dante spun around. His bolter came up to aim at a wraith-thin girl in a dirty grey smock.

  He lowered his gun. ‘Little one, we are the angels of the Emperor. We seek a way out. Can you help us?’

  She came forwards fearlessly. She was around twelve Terran years old. Dante hoped that was old enough for her to tell the difference between loyalist and traitor.

  ‘Food,’ she said.

  Dante nodded and knelt. Slowly, so as not to scare her, he took a ration biscuit from his belt. ‘We were given these to give to you, so you would not starve,’ he said.

  She snatched it from his hand, tearing its plastek package open with her teeth. She wolfed it down. Her threadbare dress blew against her, showing ribs made prominent by hunger.

  ‘You know we are here to save you? We are not like the others.’

  She nodded. ‘You are the red angels. Father says you are good. Come this way,’ she said.

  Dante stood in relief. Still his thirst surged, but for now it was under control. He suffered thoughts of him ripping the girl’s throat open and drinking her dry, but he discarded them and they had no effect on his comportment.

  ‘See?’ said Laziel, as Dante grabbed his arm. ‘We must trust to those we protect to help us. With her aid we will rejoin the Legion.’

  Dante froze. ‘Legion, brother?’

  ‘Our Chapter,’ said Laziel muzzily. ‘Our Chapter.’

  Laziel’s voice slurred. Dante hoped from pain. The alternative was too terrible to consider.

  They went up obliquely through manufactory districts emptied by deliberate starvation. Factory dormitories stood silent, the bones of the dead shrouded by dust. They were moving away from the sounds of battle, and a deep quiet fell on the hive.

  Laziel became stronger and needed Dante’s aid less and less, but his confusion grew. Dante faced a dilemma: he needed to signal his comrades, but if Laziel was succumbing to the Black Rage then disaster beckoned.

  The girl darted into a crack. Dante peered after her. She had gone into the fabric of the hive via a fault line in its wall. Stalactites orange with ferric compounds hung from the ceiling. She stopped and beckoned to him. He examined the passage; although tall, it was only just big enough for him to get into. He pushed Laziel in first.

  ‘The Palace will hold,’ said Laziel. ‘You will see.’

  ‘Laziel! Stay with me. Please, remember who you are.’

  ‘I am Brother Laziel, and you are Brother Dante,’ he slurred.

  ‘That’s right, I am Dante. Now crawl. Stay focused on the present. The memories of our father reach for you. Resist them.’

  ‘Yes,’ he muttered. ‘I see them. I know, Dante. I will not fall. I swear.’

  The passage cut into a proper access way, although one long disused. The girl led them down this to a recently patched door. Two sentries waited outside, stick-thin from starvation, clothes filthy and threadbare. Nevertheless, they were vigilant, and fell to their knees when they saw the Blood Angels emerge from the dark.

  ‘My lords!’ one said.

  ‘On your feet, please. Do not bow,’ said Dante. ‘My brother needs urgent help. I have to contact my Chapter.’

  The men nodded. One rapped on the gate.

  ‘Open! Open!’ he called.

  The gates swung wide. Another corridor, broken by barricades, led a short way before turning sharply right into another set of gates. Ragged men stood up from their firing positions to gape at the demigods in their midst. Dante ignored them, dragging the semi-conscious Laziel with him. The second gates opened into a large, galleried factory filled with people. They lay on makeshift beds and crammed every square inch between giant steel presses. They crowded the catwalks running across the width of the hall, and sat in groups on balconies. Everywhere he looked, there were people.

  The warm fug of close human life hit the Space Marines. So much life. So much blood. Laziel stirred. Dante’s worry grew. Saliva filled his mouth.

  ‘Who is in charge here?’ Dante said.

  Many of the crowd knelt in supplication and made the sign of the aquila, but they parted wide to let the Space Marines through.

  ‘Father!’ said the girl, running to a heavily bearded man. Like all of them, his cheeks were hollow and eyes sunken from the lack of food. He embraced his daughter and approached the Space Marines.

  ‘I am Segelyes, factory headman. I am in charge, by the assent of my citizens. We are grateful to see you. The Emperor truly protects – we see that now, eh brothers and sisters?’

  He shouted out to the room. A chorus of tired ‘Ayes!’ came back.

  ‘The war is not done yet,’ Dante said. ‘Do you have a room where I might lay my brother? He is sorely wounded.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Segelyes led them to a small office. He ushered out the two families inside.

  Dante lowered Laziel to the ground, glad to be free of his weight.

  ‘Horus comes, brother,’ whispered Laziel.

  ‘What is he saying?’ said Segelyes curiously.

  ‘He is delirious,’ said Dante, more sharply than he intended. ‘Please, a moment. I have to signal my brothers.’

  ‘Of course.’ Segelyes bowed and withdrew, closing the door after him. Too flimsy to hold a brother. Dante cursed inwardly.

  ‘Laziel, listen to me. You must remember.’

  ‘Remember?’

  ‘The Five Graces. Remember.’

  ‘What graces?’ he said feverishly.

  ‘The Rule, Laziel. The Five Graces and the Five Virtues.’

  ‘Rule? I impose no such thing on my sons.’

  Dante’s pulse rose with his anguish. He opened his vox-channels. ‘This is Dante. Respond. We are separated from Squad Ophid. Please respond.’

  A tense second followed. Dante nearly shouted in relief when the vox crackled in response.

  ‘Dante, this is Lorenz. We thought you were dead. The enemy is retreating. Victory approaches. Stay where you are and we will come to retrieve you. Captain Avernis has located your suit signum. I warn you, it might take a while. There is a knot of resistance between us and you. Somehow, you have pushed your way through The P
urge’s lines.’

  ‘How long?’ said Dante. He was whispering.

  ‘What is wrong?’

  ‘Lorenz, we have been taken in by a group of civilians. There are a thousand or more of them.’

  ‘It is good that someone has survived this horror.’

  Dante’s mouth went dry. ‘Laziel is badly wounded. Lorenz. He’s falling.’

  ‘Black or red?’

  ‘The black. The Black Rage. He’s gibbering about Legions and the Imperial Palace.’

  The vox snapped. Avernis’ voice replaced Lorenz’s. ‘Dante, you must leave immediately. Get Laziel away from the citizens. Head for this rendezvous point here.’

  A cartograph flashed across Dante’s faceplate. A red dot pulsed upon it.

  ‘I will send someone to get you now. The route is harder, and you will be at risk, but you have to leave. Be ready for extraction in one hour.’

  ‘Yes, captain,’ said Dante. ‘Stay here,’ he said to Laziel.

  Laziel moaned. Dante stopped by the door. Know no fear. He felt no fear for himself – that part of the legend was true – but he feared greatly for the fate of the people in the machine hall.

  ‘Segelyes, I need your help,’ he said, as evenly as he could. ‘My brothers are coming to evacuate my injured comrade. I need to get to here.’ Quickly, he sketched the map on the floor with the tip of an armoured finger, scratching it into the rockcrete floor. The mortals glanced at each other, amazed at the skill the rendition exhibited.

  ‘I recognise it – it is half a mile from here. An external port in the hive skin. Maintenance.’

  The hive shook to a faint rumble.

  ‘Can you point me in the correct direction?’

  ‘It would be easier to show you,’ said Segelyes.

  ‘It is not necessary.’

  A cry came from Laziel. Dante weighed his options. He could probably get there on his own. But if he didn’t…

  ‘Very well. Take me, but only a few of you. We cannot risk attracting the enemy’s attention.’ That was not the reason. Dante could not tell them of the risk Laziel posed to them. Better a few die than many.