Angels of Caliban

by Gav Thorpe

  ‘I did not question his loyalty, simply his origins,’ Luther replied, accepting the interruption with a shrug. Not yet, he added to himself. ‘He grew up in the green forests but was not born of them, that cannot be disputed.’

  Luther waited to see if Belath had anything else to say, but the Chapter Master simply clenched his jaw and ground his teeth.

  ‘Would a true son of Caliban have allowed the Imperium to rape our world? To raze the forests and build arcologies on the ruins of our cities? What true son of Caliban would have lauded this as progress, to see our ancient traditions washed away by the Imperial Truth, our noble history overwritten by the propaganda of remembrancers and the lies of Imperial Iterators?’

  There was some reaction from those on the other tables, resentment in the expressions of some, doubt on the faces of others. At a glance, Luther judged that Zahariel’s sweep had been almost perfect. One or two with golden goblets appeared dubious, but none of the Space Marines marked with silver cups looked supportive. It was up to him to win them round. He knew that if any resisted, it would be his failure, despite his words to Lord Cypher earlier that day.

  ‘What is the measure of the lord that was sent to us? I called him son and brother, the closest of us all to his greatness, and was happy to dwell in his shadow. The Lion. I named him. Brought him from the wilds and gave him civilisation. Aldurukh took him as its own, not the Emperor, not the Imperium.

  ‘We hailed him as our saviour, and with him destroyed the Great Beasts. Was it for us that he launched his purge, or was it simply vengeance against the creatures that had hunted him in his infancy? No deed did he do for us that was not for his own betterment. The other knights he crushed, until there was only the Order. Dissension? Differences of opinion? These were unwelcome visitors to the court of Lion El’Jonson.’

  ‘You followed him as gladly as any other,’ called one of the Space Marines at the lower tables.

  Thanks to the system of symbols upon his war-plate, Luther was able to read the man in a moment. His livery marked him out as a Tactical sergeant, his Legion badges showed him to be a member of the Second Chapter of the 23rd Order, a warrior drawn from the armoured companies of the Ironwing. Evidently not under the influence of Griffayn.

  ‘I followed him gladly, brother,’ answered the Grand Master. ‘Did we not all look to the light of his presence and take warmth from it? Did we not all ignore the darkness inside, bedazzled as one looks upon the sun though not caring that one is being turned blind? I admit my guilt, my errors. I layered civility and command and manners upon a beast of the woods, dressed it as a knight and called it lord. I gave up my rank, my title, to this creature.’

  ‘It is our gene-father you insult,’ Belath growled. ‘You are of the Legiones Astartes, but you are not a Space Marine. The blood of the Lion flows in the veins of all others here.’

  ‘Blood? Genetics? These are the things to which loyalty is paid?’ Luther caught himself as he was about to sneer. He wanted to be positive, to project a vision of greatness, not be drawn into petty squabbling.

  The Grand Master took a breath and continued, refusing to rise to the debate.

  ‘Honour. Honour is the foundation upon which Aldurukh is built. We honour our liege lord and our duties to him. Yet he has duties too, but honours them not. Would a true lord of Caliban take the sons of his world, the best of its people, and turn them into warlords for another power? I am not a Space Marine, that is true. I was too old. Too sure in myself. Too independent.’

  He saw that this elicited a few more frowns of consternation.

  ‘Who would steal whole generations of children for wars on distant worlds? Not for Caliban is that blood spilt. Each of you, I can see it in your eyes, has seen horrors the like of which I cannot imagine. The pain of civil war. The torment of seeing brothers slain, by those that you had thought also to be brothers.’

  There was anguish, even in the eyes of Belath. This was it, this was the vein to be mined. Luther pressed on, his confidence renewed.

  ‘What part did Caliban play in this uprising? None. It is a creation of the primarchs, using the worlds of others as their battleground. They spill the blood of Caliban, the blood of Olympus, the blood of Baal Secundus and Macragge and even the blood of great Terra, in whose name genocide was wreaked upon the galaxy.’

  A subtle change came about, almost unnoticed, but mention of the Great Crusade hardened expressions against Luther. He had to remember that these were veterans of those wars. Whatever the wrong or right of the cause, it was they that had conquered the galaxy. He could not cast them as villains in their own story. He quickly returned to his favourite subject.

  ‘Death and pain, sacrifice and blood, paid for by sons of Caliban to fight the wars of others. Not once has a foe threatened our world, but over the decades a quarter of a million of our sons have been taken from us. And what future heroes have been denied us, when the lineage of such warriors cannot be passed on?’ This was a delicate subject, but one that had to be raised, forestalling future objections. ‘Do not tell me that the Lion was loyal to Caliban. The oaths we swore to him are no longer valid. No bond exists when the other side has broken the contract. Loyalty does not pass one way, it is exchanged.’

  ‘It is not your place to make demands of the primarch,’ said Belath, looking at Luther as though he were a piece of something left in the Angelicasta’s effluent filters. ‘It is no secret that you dishonoured yourself and were sent back to Caliban as a result. Even then, you disobeyed your lord. Some of us remember Zaramund.’

  Again it was an effort not to respond to the jibe. Luther had to be above this. This could not be about him and his loyalty, it had to be about Caliban and its future. The insults were rendered meaningless in such a context and needed to be ignored.

  ‘I am confident in my honour, as you all should be. Can we say the same of the creature to whom we swore those oaths?’ As Luther addressed the Space Marines, he caught a glimpse of Zahariel in the corner of his eye. No more dedicated servant of the Lion had there once been, but now that connection had been shattered. ‘Should we not ask Brother Nemiel what loyalty the Lion paid him?’

  There were sharp intakes of breath. There was no doubt that word of the deed had spread amongst the Legion, the truth of it distorted one way or the other. Luther looked at Belath.

  ‘Were you not there, the day the Lion raised his hand and struck down a son of Caliban for the sin of disagreement?’

  Belath opened his mouth to respond but Luther continued on, raising his voice and turning away from the Chapter Master to address the rest of the audience. Belath was rapidly becoming a lost cause, but he could not let that pollute his intentions.

  ‘Brother-Redemptor Nemiel, appointed guardian of the hearts and minds of his brothers, the representative of the Emperor Himself.’ He glanced at Asmodeus. ‘Yes, we know of Chaplains and the breaking of the Librarius. Messengers came with the Emperor’s decrees from Nikaea. A decree that even the Lion has now seen fit to ignore. But Nemiel’s will was stronger than that – his honour, his bond forged of sterner stuff. And he died for that oath he swore, killed by the same jealous hand that had laid low all rivals on Caliban.’

  He paused and took a long breath, continuing with lowered voice.

  ‘Was this not the hand that cast me aside, and many of your brothers, for a perceived slight? No explanation, no trial or evidence presented. Not even the good grace to make public accusations. You have been fed innuendo, rumour, gossip. No contending voices. No dissent. The Imperial Truth.’ Luther stepped away and walked around the table, turning his back on Belath to approach the others as a comrade. He held out a hand, horizontal, palm up, the other held to his breast. ‘Chains thrown around Caliban, my brothers. Chains around you.’

  ‘You swore oaths to the Emperor also,’ Belath said from behind Luther. ‘Do you deny the sovereignty of the Master of Mankind?’

  This was also dangerous ground, but could not be avoided. Luther raised a finger
to his chin, thoughtful.

  ‘Where was the Emperor when Horus turned? What did the Emperor do when His favoured son, the Warmaster, the lord of lords, broke his oaths to the Imperium? Did He summon his Legion? Did He call upon the mighty First as he had done during the Unification Wars? No.’ Not one of the Space Marines present was a Terran, but such was the power of the Legion’s history, so strong had been the inculcation into the myth of the First Legion, that many were shaking their heads with displeasure. ‘Did the Emperor even set forth with a lesser Legion, and raise up His hand to strike His wayward son? No.’

  He could see that his audience knew where his rhetoric was leading, but he was never one to shirk from delivering the definitive conclusion.

  ‘Did the Emperor even leave Terra?’

  There it was. A subtle murmur from some, mouthed wordlessly by a few others. He did not need to say it himself.

  ‘No.’

  Luther wished he could see Belath, but his attention was fixed on the rest of the Dark Angels. He stole a glance towards Zahariel and the others. They were ready, attention moving from Luther to the other Space Marines and back.

  Feigning the need to relax, Luther rolled his shoulders and neck and turned back to the head table, his glance passing over Asmodeus. The Librarian sat with fingers steepled to his bottom lip, intent on the Grand Master.

  That was good.

  Zahariel heard only half of what Luther said. It was no small effort of will to maintain the grip he had on the minds of the Grand Master’s audience. There was no sign that Asmodeus was aware of the subtle aura Zahariel projected into the other Space Marines.

  It was not the power he channelled that exhausted Zahariel – Caliban provided much through the minds of his disciples, he simply directed it. His fatigue came from the need to hold in check the ravening energy, maintaining control, letting it seep ever so gently into the minds of those that listened to Luther, keeping the flow slow enough to avoid detection by Belath’s Librarian.

  Zahariel had not managed to lure the Librarian into the chamber of the Mystai, where the Ouroboros would have been able to set him free from the chains of the Emperor’s mental prison. Even so, Asmodeus had been open to the idea of a wider spectrum of study. Talents suppressed for so long by the Edict of Nikaea had craved employment, and recent use of his psychic powers had left Asmodeus hungry to experience more, even if he did not realise it.

  Even so, he would not react well to discovering Zahariel’s part of the plan. Years of conditioning, decades of service could not be overturned by words alone. Luther held no illusions in that regard and had turned to Zahariel for assistance. Nor could they be swayed by psychic intervention alone, not without an overt intrusion that would elicit a counter-attack from Asmodeus. It was the combination of wordplay and mindplay that would turn the Dark Angels to Luther’s cause.

  ‘I will not follow Horus!’ declared one of the Dark Angels.

  ‘Nor I!’ Luther replied instantly, shaking his head. ‘I will not swap one tyrant for another. Caliban will be free, ruled only by its sons and daughters.’

  ‘The Emperor is not a tyrant.’ Zahariel did not catch where the voice came from, but it served Luther’s purposes so well that he could have scripted it.

  ‘No?’ the Grand Master said as he rounded the end of the table. ‘Is He not?’

  Reclaiming his place between Belath and Griffayn, his positioning a declaration of authority, Luther leaned forward with fists on the dark wood.

  ‘Prospero.’

  One word whispered had the same effect as a dozen shouted. It was a word charged with potential. Luther left the Space Marines to their own thoughts for a few seconds, allowing them to conjure up whatever images the word entailed. Whatever thoughts they were, encouraged by images from Zahariel, the Dark Angels could not help but place Caliban into the position of Prospero for a moment.

  ‘The world of Magnus and the Thousand Sons. The Emperor sent His dogs, the hounds of Fenris, leaving nothing but ruins and pyres.’ Mention of the Space Wolves elicited even more of a reaction than that of the razed planet, though Zahariel did not know what had passed between the Legions for such bad feeling to fester. Every warrior reacted with indignation to the speech. Luther would be delighted, but he kept any triumphant tone from his voice. ‘The Space Wolves, the Emperor’s new weapon of choice. Barbarians who would slaughter a world of intellect and reason simply because they do not understand what it represents.

  ‘And the lord that would despatch such a host? That is the nature of the Emperor. That is the nature of the Lion’s master. And so it is the nature of the Lion. The pattern is clear. I raised him as best I could, but the Lion was lost to us the moment the Emperor came to Caliban. The true father, the true nature of his laboratory-created sons, came to the fore. Strife, rebellion, discord. Where now the Imperial Truth when dissent is all around?’

  Even Belath looked uncertain. But Luther was not yet done. There was a final wound to inflict before the coup de main would be delivered.

  ‘The war has not yet come to Caliban, but it will. It must. How many worlds have fallen to disaster in recent years, though they thought they would be overlooked by the great powers that vie for the galaxy? Do not think that the Emperor is done with Caliban. Though storms eclipse the galaxy, whole systems sundered from each other, the Emperor has the will to send his spies to our world.’

  This was met with some incredulity, but it was to be expected. A bold claim, for which Luther had no physical proof. Fortunately he did not need any.

  ‘I have witnesses, proud sons of Caliban that will testify to the intrusion. I held in a cell not a kilometre from where we are a son of another world sent as an agent of Terra. To what purpose? He would not say. And on that you must remember that you are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say. And if he could not say his purpose I must divine that it was not of good intent for Caliban.

  ‘What are we to make of these two things? Prospero burns and a spy of the Emperor comes to Caliban with secret purpose. Are we to ignore these things, claim them to be mere coincidence? Should we remain unprepared, waiting like sheep for the wolves?

  ‘Are we also to believe that, against all history and reason, Horus woke up mad one morning and decided to defy the Emperor? Or should we surmise that he perhaps saw a deeper truth and acted in the only way he could, in the only manner a warlord-bred demigod can act? I do not pretend to know the answers. Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. I share your confusion, for these are terrible times that reason has forgotten. But I must ask you to consider one more thing.’

  Luther laid his hand on the arm of Griffayn. The Grand Master seemed to tower over the seated Space Marine, passing on his approval with the touch.

  ‘Where, now, is the Lion when star systems burn and armies die? Does he come to his home, to fair Caliban, to make sure it is safe?’

  There was a pregnant pause as everyone waited for the voted lieutenant to answer. Had Lord Cypher done enough to win Griffayn to the cause?

  ‘No,’ replied Griffayn, frowning. ‘The Lion went to Macragge.’

  ‘Macragge?’ Luther’s feigned surprise was almost believable even to Zahariel, who had been present when the Grand Master had first learned this. ‘What would take the Lion to Macragge when it seems rational to think that the Warmaster’s intentions have always been upon the Throneworld?’

  ‘Guilliman builds a second empire, abandoning his oaths to Terra,’ Griffayn confided.

  Zahariel needed no psychic power to sense the shock of this revelation emanating from the audience. They had known of their lord’s departure, but perhaps had not questioned the reasons for his absence.

  ‘The primarch abandons our world to cruel fate, not for the protection of Terra, but to raise up a rival to the Throne of the Emperor. Not he, nor the Emperor, nor Horus can be trusted with our best interest. That power must be held by Calibanites alone.’
>
  The moment was nearly at hand. Even Belath was subdued, perhaps not convinced but no longer voicing opposition. From what little Zahariel had gleaned from his psychic assault on the Chapter Master, he believed that Belath would ultimately be swayed by the majority. He had always cleaved close to those that held the reins of power – the Lion and then Corswain. It would not take much for his loyalty to switch to Luther.

  The Grand Master was so close to gaining the support of every Space Marine in the hall. Belath and Griffayn would be the foundation of a new ruling council headed by Luther and advised by Lord Cypher. Astelan would certainly become surplus to requirements.

  The Master of the Mystai contemplated this likely future. The Order would be stronger, unified at the highest level of command. Luther’s vision of a liberated Caliban would become reality.

  Peace in our times.

  But Caliban did not desire peace. Peace was the soft prison. Peace was the deathly silence of the tomb.

  Caliban needed strife. It needed conflict. The very things that Luther decried of the Lion would become his legacy – dissent quashed, opposition negated. A single voice. The voice of Luther, not Caliban.

  Zahariel let the power of the Ouroboros burst out, tearing it from the minds of the assembled Space Marines to forge a single pulse of power. A bolt of green lightning sprang from his fingertips as he thrust his hand towards the head table, the air crackling and fizzing with energy.

  The bolt struck Belath in the chest, cracking open his war-plate with a jade detonation. The blast hurled the Chapter Master through the air, sending his lifeless body skidding across the flags a dozen metres beyond.

  ‘A vision!’ shouted Zahariel. ‘He was going to attack you, Grand Master!’

  Clamour filled the hall as the Dark Angels reacted. Armour whined and toppled benches crashed to the ground. The clatter of bolters being readied was a staccato overture of impending violence.

  Lord Cypher drew his blade as Griffayn pulled a bolt pistol. Asmodeus rose up, a glimmering aura of power emanating from the wires of the psychic hood that encompassed his head.