by Guy Haley
The number of brother Chapters was impressive, a portent of victory, the rash said. The assembling battle-brothers drew strength from the presence of so many others like themselves. Among the warriors present were thousands who had never been to sacred Baal, whose only contact with the father Chapter were infrequent and resented visits from the Blood Angels High Chaplains. Their ways were strange to those of the Blood Angels, and many were markedly different in appearance and behaviour. Although none but the Blood Angels could lay claim to birth on the triple worlds of Sanguinius’ finding, and were thus not of the sacred Tribes of the Blood, ultimately their gene-seed derived from Sanguinius’. All were of his lineage, and bonds more terrible and deeper than those between any other Chapters existed. Brotherhood spread its web across Baal more tightly than at any time since the Emperor walked among men.
Yet this did not bring Dante joy, either.
A long line of transports flew down from the fleets, stacked up so far that the hindmost were motile glints. Gunships and lifters, lighters and bulk landers, conveyed an endless line of materiel to the spiritual home of Sanguinius’ sons. A score of Chapters emptied their ships’ holds of weapons, tanks, ammunition, and more. The supplies were welcome. A third wall was being erected out beyond the unearthed second. This last was of the low, prefabricated segments all Space Marine Chapters were equipped with. More were being made as Dante watched. Auto-castelators scooped up huge buckets of sand and dumped them into hopper-moulds on their trailers. With great heat and pressure the sand was crushed into shape. Fresh, steaming segments of defence line were dropped onto the desert to be dragged into place by waiting haulers.
Formations of vehicles in varied shades of red were parked around the monastery. Down aisles formed of slab-armoured tanks, hundreds of Techmarines from across the galaxy walked, sharing their ideas and experience with eager listeners.
Dante kept his progress slow around the Arx, so that he might better see the host of Angels. Balor, Baal’s large, ruby sun, made his golden armour red. Airborne sand whispered against the ceramite of his shell. The Arx Angelicum was so tall that the noise of the army marshalling in the desert and all the sounds of work as Baal fortified itself were reduced to faint suggestions of themselves. Engines were puttering disturbances. Myriad conversations were reduced to infrequent, thin shouts. The rumble of jets was as quiet as the hiss of sand on sand. Though his hearing was as sharp as any Space Marine’s, this was all Dante heard. He left his vox-beads off, and his auto-senses dormant. Having spent sleepless weeks welcoming the stream of arrivals and formulating his strategies, he sought peace on the wall, seizing it where it did not come to him voluntarily. The host gathered at his feet in rich, desert quiet.
Every half mile a pair of winged Sanguinary Guard stood in vigil. They saluted their master as he passed. The warriors wore gear nearly identical to Dante’s, but the masks of the Sanguinary Guard showed the features of their wearer. Of all men, only Dante wore Sanguinius’ face. Only he had that burden.
Baal Secundus moved up the sky, obscuring the edge of the sun and bringing a transient dusk to the desert world. This little darkness would pass in an hour as Baal Secundus continued its orbit, and day would resume. Eclipses were an everyday occurrence on all three of the Baal triple. There was nothing so simple as day and night on any of them.
As the moon covered more of Balor, the dark grew, and the temperature dropped. A sudden, warm wind blew out of the desert, stirring the flags of the Blood Angels into motion, and making Dante’s cloak snap.
Fittingly it was in that short spell of night that Mephiston came to him, emerging from one of the Arx Murus’ many armoured doors. Jerron Leeter, the Master of Astropaths, walked in his black shadow. The Blood Angels Chief of Librarians was a figure almost as legendary as Dante. Among the most potent psykers in the Adeptus Astartes, Mephiston’s power was known across the Imperium. But while Dante was celebrated and his leadership sought, Mephiston was shunned. He was secretive, and feared by all.
Mephiston did nothing to counter this opinion. His armour was cast to resemble the exposed musculature of a flayed man, incongruously framed in gold. Every fibre of a human’s exposed subdermal anatomy had been lovingly reproduced in ceramite, the horrible made no less disturbing by the artistry employed. His armour was a deeper red than the Blood Angels norm, a dark, arterial crimson lacquered to a high gloss, so that Mephiston’s gory panoply glistened as if wet. He habitually went unhelmeted. A psychic hood of unusual design framed his face. Mephiston was inhumanly beautiful in a Chapter renowned for physical perfection, and the scholiasts of the Blood Angels insisted he looked much like Sanguinius himself. If Mephiston did take after their gene-father, it was Sanguinius dead, for Mephiston’s perfection was that of a sarcophagus effigy. His troubled soul made beauty into ugliness, and the freezing, hard light in his eyes was enough to frighten the bravest man.
Leeter was another exceptional example of his type. He had survived the soul binding with his senses intact. Virtually every other astropath Dante had encountered in his long life had been blind, their eyes burned out by their communion with the Emperor, while some had no earthly senses remaining to them at all. This singular characteristic was the mark of Leeter’s power and Leeter’s will, as much as it was of the infinite grace of the Emperor. That such a prized operative as Leeter had been assigned to the Blood Angels was a token of how highly the Chapter was regarded by the Adeptus Astra Telepathica.
Leeter’s second sight was as extraordinary as his first. He could commune across space with the Librarians of the Chapter, bypassing his fellow astropaths. He could pierce the most terrible of veils, catch the most degraded teleprayer on the treacherous currents of the empyrean.
Leeter could see through all but the shadow in the warp. That remained opaque, even to him.
Seeing his Chief Librarian approach, Dante stopped and awaited his arrival. Mephiston greeted him. Leeter knelt, head bowed, until Dante told him to rise.
‘My lord, how goes the muster?’ said Mephiston. His voice was dry and whispery. During true night it was stronger. Something in the Chief Librarian loathed the day.
‘It goes well,’ said Dante. ‘Our brothers move quickly, as they must. The hive fleet will soon be here. Time has been generous to us, but it runs out.’ Dante could not stop looking up into the sky, past the fleet, the moons and the sun, to where swarms of xenos monstrosities swam the killing depths of space towards Baal.
‘Twenty-seven Chapters have already arrived, my lord,’ said Leeter. Though he had knelt out of respect, as a senior member of another adepta, Leeter had no qualms about speaking freely in front of the Chapter Master. ‘More have promised their help. There are Chapters of the Blood here that are not on any roll the Chief Librarian’s scholiasts can unearth for me. In my wildest hopes, I could not have dreamed of such a response.’ Leeter’s long, emerald robe moved violently in the eclipse wind. His remarkable eyes sparkled with fervour.
‘The sons of the Great Angel are loyal,’ said Mephiston.
‘There are over fifteen thousand sons of Sanguinius in-system already,’ said Dante. ‘Estimates suggest we may eventually be blessed with as many as twenty-five thousand. Every warrior that comes here is another stone in our defences against Leviathan.’
Dante could feel Mephiston watching him closely. Dante had changed in the last months. The weariness he strived so hard to hide from others had fallen away, and his vigour had returned. But he had also become dour, his outlook grim. Dante’s last equerry, Arafeo, had offered up his blood at the end of his service. Dante could not have refused had he wanted to. From death Dante’s new-found energy came. Death would be his reward for it.
Dante was sure Mephiston could sense all this. So it should be. Dante made no effort to hide his shame from the Librarian.
‘Is there news from Cadia?’ Dante asked.
‘Not much, my lord,’ said Mephiston. ‘And what littl
e there is is ill-favoured. The forces of Chaos gather in crushing strength at the Diamor system. Since Astorath sent word that he and Captain Sendini were en route to Diamor, we have heard nothing. Karlaen, Aphael and Phaeton should have arrived by now.’
‘We have had no notice of their safe translation,’ said Leeter quietly.
‘Could they have fallen?’ asked Dante.
Mephiston closed his eyes a moment. His face was as still as a funeral mask. In his armour it was impossible to tell if he breathed. Not for the first time Dante wondered if he did. ‘They still live,’ Mephiston said. ‘I would know if they did not.’
‘That is something, at least.’
‘We of the Librarium will travel to Baal Secundus and add our senses to those of the astropaths at the relay there. Perhaps we will hear something soon. In the meantime, there are better tidings.’ The Lord of Death motioned to Leeter. The astropath held out a scroll case of polished hematite decorated with bloodstone drops.
‘In this case,’ said Leeter, ‘are details of astropathic communiques from six of the battlefleets you have scouring the nearmost worlds. They are disturbingly fragmentary. Already, the shadow in the warp creeps over our territory and disrupts our communication. The content is clear enough. Their work proceeds. The tyranids will find nothing to fuel their advance. Many Chapters march at your command. It is as if the Legion of old is reborn.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Dante. He was wary of Leeter’s implicit comparison of him with Sanguinius, and concerned for the future. His every effort thus far had proved insufficient to stop Leviathan. ‘I fear it will not be enough.’
‘Though it is a sight, is it not?’ said Mephiston. Tellingly he did not speak out against Dante’s fears. Neither of them had much faith in their ultimate triumph. Both of them had faced the Great Devourer several times, most recently at the pyrrhic victory at Cryptus. They had witnessed the hive mind’s power first hand. ‘I wonder if this is what our father saw when he marshalled his Legion here, those millennia ago. I feel close to him, seeing this. The dark we face is great, but it is a fine thing to come closer to the primarch.’
‘To see an echo of what he saw with our living eyes is an honour.’ Dante was forever conscious of the sacred ruby affixed to his brow. Inside the hollow vessel was the last unadulterated liquid drop of blood taken from Sanguinius’ veins, preserved for all time. ‘He is always with me, Librarian. He is always with all of us.’
‘In our blood and our souls,’ agreed Mephiston, a truth more literal than figurative; Sanguinius’ visions haunted their dreams, and hounded them to their deaths. A war deemed ancient by others was, to Blood Angels, the betrayal of yesterday. ‘By his blood were we made.’
Dante nodded. ‘By his blood he is within all of us. And we will need his strength now, more than ever.’
Chapter Three
Eaters of the Dead
The signature state of a Space Marine warship when not in battle was quiet bustle. Second Captain Erwin of the Angels Excelsis had a fine view of his serviles at work. The Splendid Pinion’s throne platform was set upon a pier projected high over the work pits and instrument banks of the command bridge. Up there, he was as separate from the serviles as an angel in a primitive heaven is separate from the mortal sphere.
And so it should be, he thought. Sergeant Achemen was his only company on the platform, flicking through reports on a dozen screens to Erwin’s left. Achemen’s square face was fixed in concentration. It was possible he was not deep in thought, but just as bored as Erwin was.
The captain was in poor spirits. His thirst troubled him when he had little to occupy his talents. This slow road to Baal goaded the monster in his breast. He despised inactivity.
The Splendid Pinion’s deck was four hundred feet across, with a domed roof as lavishly decorated as any cathedral’s. Servo-skulls and tethered cyber-devices drifted below friezes depicting great triumphs of the Chapter. Around the rear of the circular room were galleries screened with metal fretwork to hide the servitors and lesser serviles labouring there. The screens were beautiful, but Erwin thought them a compromise of function and art. The front arc of the command deck was aesthetically finer. Columns of glittering white stone ribbed the walls. Fine lancet windows were set between them. At the forefront of the deck was the wide rose of the Splendid Pinion’s grand oculus. The central pane was a single, flawless piece of transparisteel, but the edge was made up of tiny pieces of coloured glass held in place by adamantium cames. The art was far more beautiful than the view it bordered.
A bare ball of rock turned in the oculus, as dead as all the worlds Erwin had seen over the last month. Utterly unremarkable. Erwin lost himself in the circular frieze, as he had many times before. It depicted the first Angels Excelsis in battle. The picture ran into itself, so that there was no beginning or end, but an eternity of war. After fifty years in command of the Second Company and their strike cruiser, Erwin knew every red and white figure in the image by name. Every one of the original three hundred founders was remembered in that glass. The battlegear they wore when the Chapter was formed had been perfectly reproduced, right down to their name scrolls.
Most of them had died within a year. Their first mission had been an arduous one.
How Erwin wished for such a glorious struggle now.
A chime and a flashing lumen bulb on the command panel drew his attention to the hardline vox. He accepted the communication, praying for reports of something, anything, in the system to kill.
His hopes were dashed.
‘I have yet to register any signs of life in this system, my lord Erwin,’ reported the Servile of Response. The pitch of his voice was higher than a Space Marine, a sign of human weakness. That was why the Emperor had created the Space Marines, to protect frail men who could not protect themselves. Erwin reminded himself of his sacred duty, though truth be told he found it hard not to be irked by his charges’ fragility.
Erwin looked over to the vox station, a tiered stage set fifty feet below his throne.
‘More information,’ Erwin commanded.
The Servile of Response stood smartly and saluted, but he dared not look up at his superior, and spoke to the empty air.
‘The astrogatorium records give a population of five and a half million Adeptus Mechanicus adepts, with an unknown number of servitors, my lord. There are none left. All have been devoured, along with the native biome of Sciothopa.’
‘I can see that,’ said Erwin testily. He pointed through the window. ‘I have eyes. Maintain broad scanning parameters. I am not concerned with message content at this stage, only if there are any messages to be heard.’
‘Another dead system,’ said Sergeant Achemen. His voice was as miserable as his stolid, blocky face. ‘Would you consider, my captain, that we strike from this course and head straight for Baal and the muster? Lord Follordark would concur, I am sure.’
‘The Chapter Master was clear in his orders,’ said Erwin. ‘Scout each inhabited system in this sector before heading to Baal as Dante requested, and so we will check this system thoroughly as we have checked all the rest. Any intelligence we can present to Commander Dante will be welcome, I am sure.’ Erwin settled himself more deeply into the command throne. There was little he could do to make himself comfortable in its marble immensity, the cables plugged into the power ports of his armour prevented that, but he could at least flex his legs a little. They had become stiff with inactivity.
Erwin was well regarded as a ship captain, but he longed for the physicality of battle. Facing one’s foe upon the open battlefield with sword in hand was a more satisfying experience than the mathematical exercise of void warfare, although even that would be better than this tedium.
‘Be vigilant. The enemy may still be present.’
‘We will not be taken unawares, captain,’ promised Achemen.
Erwin smiled. ‘You misunderstand. I fear
no ambush. I could use a good, honest fight.’
Achemen bowed his head. ‘As you command, my captain.’
Erwin gripped the stone lion heads adorning the throne’s arms and stared out into the void. The Red Scar draped scarlet shrouds across the cosmos, occluding the bright heart of the galaxy. Sciothopa was a minor nowhere on the way to bigger nowheres, but even these isolated systems had not been spared by the tyranids. Most of them housed only small human colonies, it being too expensive to provide large populations with protection from the Scar’s often deadly effects. Outside of the most valuable systems, Imperial presence was restricted to astropathic relay stations, Adeptus Mechanicus research bases, star castella and wayforts. Every single one had been cracked open and stripped.
Erwin looked down at the dull, dead ball of Sciothopa Prime. According to his Ordo Astra charts, it was a living world, with life adapted to the weird radiations of the Red Scar. The Adeptus Mechanicus were present to exploit this resilience, thus far without result. Now they would never have the chance to unpick its secrets. There was no evidence of life left. The seas were dry, the atmosphere sucked away. High gain picts showed the broken remains of tyrannic feeding tubes on the surface. Standard tyranid feeding patterns; after sucking up all useable resources, the tubes’ most valuable chemicals were leached away by the departing fleet, weakening them. An act of planet-wide autophagy that left lacy remains to collapse under their own weight.
Lights from the Splendid Pinion’s subsidiary craft played over the broken station orbiting Sciothopa. Glaring circles of bright light turned bent girders into shining filigree. Large parts of the station structure were missing, and the rest was close to disintegration. Erwin reckoned it would only be a few weeks before the remains were dragged from the sky by Sciothopa Prime and smashed to atoms on the surface.
‘They take even the metal,’ said Erwin.