The Devastation of Baal

by Guy Haley

  Seth looked at the treasure in incredulity.

  ‘The feather…’ he said. ‘I will not take this.’

  Dante held out the reliquary further.

  ‘It belongs to your Chapter. The spirit of your founder is rooted in its metal. That, more than the reliquary, has protected it. It is time it went home. Take it.’

  Seth looked from golden cylinder to Dante’s deadly serious face.

  ‘Then you think like me. You do not expect to win,’ said Seth.

  ‘We must win. There are uncountable foes arrayed against us, but with the Chapters of the Blood gathered here, we have a chance at victory. Even so, this fortress monastery could fall. The hive mind will attempt to destroy the Arx Angelicum. There are areas of our home that can bear such attentions without destruction, perhaps, but I have ordered that our most precious artefacts be removed and sent from this place. The Scrolls of Sanguinius, our gene-seed, and the other relics of our lord. It seemed most fitting that you should take this reliquary and its contents in memory and honour of your founder.’ Dante stopped, considering his next words carefully. ‘You may refuse, of course, but I ask you to accept this burden in honour of our friendship.’

  ‘Friendship?’ Seth frowned. ‘There is only fury, and service. Brotherhood in the bond of blood, but not friends, never friends.’

  ‘Do you really believe that, Gabriel?’ said Dante. ‘I faced dissent from the Red Council for reaching out to your Chapter. I maintain it was absolutely the correct action. You are among the most worthy men I have ever known. You struggle with the thirst and the rage, but you rise above it. You have no special gift, as does Mephiston. You are not damned like Lemartes.’

  ‘I am not as wise as you,’ said Seth.

  ‘Do you think that I am immune?’ said Dante, deeply troubled. ‘I tell you I am not. You suffer more than I do, but you resist. I do not know if I could do the same. I admire you.’

  He took Seth’s hand and placed it upon the reliquary. ‘These relics do not belong to me, I cannot give them away, but it is in my power to see they are safeguarded in whatever way I see fit. I give this into your trust as a necessity. The feather inside bears the last unadulterated drops of blood other than that contained in this bloodstone.’ Dante pressed two fingers against the blood drop on the brow of his helmet. ‘I give it to you as an honour, for all you have done for my Chapter. I give it to you in recognition of your skill and intellect. I know that should every last one of us die, you will somehow see this relic safe. But, most of all, Gabriel Seth, I give you this feather and its casket as a friend.’

  Seth hesitated.

  ‘You have changed,’ said Seth. He sniffed the air. ‘I smell it on you.’

  Dante’s head lowered. ‘I took blood, for the first time in a long time.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Seth. ‘You are not pure after all.’ He intended to express bitter pleasure, but sadness overtook him. He realised then he needed Dante to be better than all of them.

  Seth took the reliquary. ‘I will take it. I swear it shall be safe, by the Blood, and by the Great Angel, and by the Emperor.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Dante in relief. ‘Tonight we feast. Tomorrow, you will leave for Baal Primus. This may be the last opportunity you and I have to speak in private, Gabriel. I wish you good fortune.’

  Seth hefted the reliquary thoughtfully. Before he could wish Dante good fortune in return, the door had opened and the commander had gone.

  The lictor looked like a creature unto itself. It moved as a solitary organism. It had operated on its own for years, far away from the hive fleet. But it was not apart from the hive mind. That was the mistake the prey always made. Even at this corpuscular level, it was a mistake to see the lictor as a lictor, one of millions; there were not many, there was one. The lictor was the lictor. Every iteration was a copy, better than perfect for aeons of improvement, party to the actions, mistakes and successes of every other lictor that had come before. Welded to the very genes of its being were untold millions of years of experience. And it was on Baal just as it was simultaneously on a thousand other worlds throughout the galaxy.

  It put ancient lessons into action. Sight was the easiest sense to fool. The lictor moved at night, when it was harder to see. Chromatic microscales lent it near perfect chameleonic ability even in the full light of day. Deformable organ clusters embedded in its skin allowed it to change its shape somewhat, enabling it to take on the rough texture of stone, or mimic fronds of vegetation. Smell was a more primal sense, harder to deceive because of it. The lictor managed that too. It had virtually no scent. Only when it flooded the air with pheromone trails to guide its kin beasts did its emissions become noticeable. By then it was too late. Most prey could hear, so it made no sound when it moved. Special arrangements of hairs baffled the whisper of its limbs moving over one another.

  More esoteric senses were equally well accounted for. Its electromagnetic profile was minimal. Its brain case was shielded by internal bone structures against energy leakage. The nerves in its body were similarly cloaked. Its hooves were shaped to make the minimum of vibration, and although it could not entirely stop the perturbation of the air made by its movements, its chitinous plates were fluted in precise molecular, fractal patterns to minimise its wake. It gave off no heat. It shed no cells unless damaged. Its psychic link with the hive mind was like spider silk, gossamer thin, strong, and almost impossible to detect.

  More adaptations heaped on top of more. Unlike a natural organism, which loses certain gifts in favour of others as evolution pushes it down a particular path, the lictor’s advantages were retained, new gifts stacked atop the ­others. Its genetic structure was incredibly complex. Within every cell was billions of years’ worth of adaptation, culled from every lictor, coiled up one over the other. Anything useful to its role, no matter how inconsequential seeming, it retained forever.

  Every machine and psychic ability the Imperium had geared towards detection, the lictor could evade. The hive mind had consumed far more advanced races than mankind. Infiltrating Baal was child’s play. There was no need for it to employ a fraction of its considerable talents.

  At night it sprinted tirelessly across the desert, sustained by bladders of super-nutritious fluid contained within its body. The roar of the hive mind was growing stronger by the day, but the lictor was not aware of the mind. It had no sentience. Instead, the mind became aware of the lictor, much in the way a man becomes aware of his limbs only when he thinks of using them.

  On it pounded through the nights as the prey creatures’ clumsily engineered warrior caste gathered around the world. As Mephiston dreamed, it loped across the Waste of Enod. As Dante drew up his plans, it crossed the Bloodwise Mounts, bounding tirelessly from crag to crag, its hooves punching sharp holes in the pristine snows of the summits. Where it could, it fed upon Baal’s sparse life to supplement its nutrient fluids, but it did not tire. It stopped to avoid detection, never for rest.

  By the time Commander Dante called his Great Red Council to order, the lictor was skittering through the solidified lava fields of the Demitian Badlands. The prey was cunning. If other creatures like itself had made it to Baal, they had been found and destroyed, and it was a long time before it felt the sympathetic life pulses of other tyrannic organisms.

  One was all it took, for one was all, and all was one. Wherever there was a sole representative of the species, there was the hive mind.

  The final night of Leviathan’s approach drew closer. The lictor burrowed into the crest of a towering dune as Balor burst over the horizon and flooded the desert with ruby light. Its eyes peered through siftings of sand.

  Red day struck off a distant fortress, the black of its carved stone stark against the desert. Metal-shell prey conveyances flew from the fortress into the great star sea, and all around it were thousands of the prey warriors.

  A feeble number against the onrushing tri
llions. If the lictor could have, it would have felt contempt. But it did not. It could not. It saw a target like a scope sees a target. It knew without thinking, without being, what it must do. Sophisticated senses appraised the fortress for weakness.

  It saw nothing it could use, not yet. It needed more information.

  Burrowing deeper into the sand, the lictor settled in to wait.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Feast of the Damned

  For one night, the Chapters of the Blood did not speak of the tyranids.

  The Well of Angels was crammed with long tables arranged in a series of nested hexagons. The very centre was occupied by a temporary dais, upon which sat Dante and his fellow Chapter Masters. Outside that sat the captains, scores of them, and the executive officers of the Chapters. Then the Sanguinary priests, who occupied a facet of a hexagon facing the Chaplains. On the same table, occupying another side of the hexagon, were a hundred Librarians. Beyond them sat hundreds of Techmarines and squad sergeants. Only past that did the many tiers of tables accommodating the battle-brothers begin. Finally, bounding them all in a thin line, was a single tier of tables set aside for the Chapters’ most important mortal servants. Astropaths, navigators, human shipmasters and officers, warrior serfs, logisticiam illuminati, historitors, scholiasts, craftsmen, and the hundred more professions required to keep a Chapter running. The tables so thoroughly filled the Well of Angels that the mortal table was set upon the first level of the Verdis Elysia, and so the human contingent looked down upon their transhuman masters. Viewed from on high in the volcano’s shaft, the tables resembled an ancient angelic hierarchy of which Dante, clad as always in his gleaming golden battleplate, was the highest archangel of all. He sat upon a throne above the others. Now that the voting was done, Erwin supposed he wished to show his authority.

  In one place the tables’ circuit was broken. A circular hollow was set into the floor there. Ordinarily it held a small lake, but it had been drained, revealing a deep fighting pit floored with washed sand. There would be duelling to follow the feasting.

  The difficulties in provisioning the feast stretched the capabilities of the Blood Angels’ logisticiam. Brother Adanicio’s serfs, used to feeding a few thousand mouths, were suddenly presented with ten times more. The blood thralls worked tirelessly. Servants of every rank volunteered to fill lowly serving roles as the success of the feast and the reputation of their masters’ Chapter meant a great deal to them. Men used to governing cities passed between the rows of tables bearing heavy platters and trays weighty with wine for the honour of it.

  Vat creatures and cybernetic slaves flew overhead; plumes of heavy blue incense smoke poured from censers carried by some, while others played heavenly music that shifted and changed according to the mood of the crowd.

  ‘This is an exceptional vintage,’ said Erwin, sipping his wine. A medley of flavours teased his palette, enriched with a few drops of fresh, expertly spiced blood. ‘And just enough vitae to sate the thirst without provoking it further.’

  His dinner mate was a captain of the Angels Sanguine named Bolthus. He drained his cup.

  ‘You speak the truth, brother. We have nothing like this. The soils of our world are too bitter to bear such fine fruits.’

  Erwin nodded. ‘Most are. We are a void Chapter. Our opportunities for agriculture are narrow. Still, we can thank the efforts of the Blood Angels for such excellent food. They are paragons in all things.’

  ‘Is that irony, brother-captain?’ said the warrior to his right, a captain of the Sable Brotherhood. He was a lugubrious character who reminded Erwin more than a little of Achemen. His name was Gos.

  Gos pushed his goblet forward with outstretched fingers. The eyes of a servo-skull floating nearby flickered. A moment later, a serf appeared to replenish the drink.

  ‘They say Dante emptied his cellars,’ said Bolthus appreciatively.

  ‘Is that so?’ said Erwin.

  ‘I would too were I in his position. I heard a rumour he sent away his gene-seed,’ said Gos. He sat up straighter.

  ‘And what of it?’ said Bolthus.

  ‘We might not win,’ Gos said.

  ‘Ill fortune to speak so,’ said Bolthus.

  ‘Victory is never assured,’ said Erwin. ‘It must be fought for with cunning and great strength. Leave “thoughts of defeat are heresy” to the Astra Militarum. We are above that. We have to be. If we cannot countenance defeat, how can we find our way to victory?’

  Erwin looked around, his curiosity piqued by the diversity of men who staffed his brother Chapters. As a last symbol of peace (although Erwin thought it more to save space) Dante had ordered that they attend in their day robes. These were almost as varied as their wearers. Among the scions of Sanguinius there were all manner of skin tones, variations in height and eye colour, but all of them unmistakably bore the marks of their gene-sire. Even those brothers whose basic physiology was markedly different had been changed by their gene-seed, their faces resculpted to echo the thousands of images of Sanguinius that filled the Arx Angelicum. They resembled each other in a fundamental way that simply sharing kinship could not explain. He looked upon myriad variations of Sanguinius’ face. Some Chapters were more heavily touched than others, so that all their battle-brothers looked as if they had been stamped out of a mould.

  The only real differences were evident in expressions of the flaw. Some Chapters appeared to suffer more than ­others. Those most heavily cursed were either dour at their predicament or straining with rage they could only just contain. There were a few Chapters in this latter category who hid it better than others, the Flesh Tearers being one, but they betrayed their tension in their body language and manners. Some bore the first signs of genuine deviancy. There were warriors with bulging, bloodshot eyes, or unnaturally dry skin like the Blood Drinkers, the glowering mien of the Red Knights, the bright white hair of the Red Wings, and the pronounced eye teeth of the Charnel Guard.

  Gos had skin so white his veins were a map of blue rivers. Bolthus was unusually ruddy, his angelic features coarse.

  Lord Follordark was on the dais with Dante. Unlike their men, the Chapter Masters wore their power armour, all of it burnished to a gleaming shine.

  ‘How can they celebrate on the eve of battle?’ said Gos.

  ‘What would your Chapter do, Brother Gos?’ said Erwin.

  ‘Stand vigil,’ said Gos. ‘In silence.’

  ‘Well, I prefer to drink,’ said Bolthus, and raised his goblet.

  The evening passed in similar exchanges. Erwin spoke with these two and the captains a few seats down from him on either side. The officers had been mixed to sit with those of other Chapters, and Erwin’s nearest Chapter brother was ten seats away. Erwin had an open mind. He welcomed the opportunity to meet others. He had the feeling that Gos did not feel the same way.

  Once, he caught Asante staring at him. He was sitting so that he was just visible to Erwin, where the table bent around and the captains further on were hidden by the Chapter Masters’ dais. Erwin nodded at him. The fleet captain looked away.

  Dante kept a good table. Nine courses were served in ­honour of the old Legion’s number. The wine kept flowing, so much of it that Erwin began to feel its effect as the night wore on. Finally, the last plates were cleared away, and the Chapters each nominated one of their number to recite a poem of their deeds, or to sing of glorious days. Among the Chapters who shared the Blood Angels’ fondness for art there were many fine lyricists. Some of the Chapters of the Blood looked disdainfully on, for their control stemmed from self-denial and the scourging of the flesh. Gos in particular appeared dismayed at such frivolity. Others yet had darker ways of managing the thirst. Throughout, Dante sat quietly. He did not remove his helmet or partake of any drink or meat. When the final lay had been recited and all the trumpets and lyres set aside, Dante stood.

  ‘Now we shall end our evening,
my brothers, in displays of martial skill,’ said the commander. ‘Who will duel first in the Ring of Heaven?’

  There set up an enormous clamour to claim the ­honour. Hundreds stood from their tables and shouted out their names.

  Erwin saw Asante make his way up to the dais, and attract his lord’s attention. Dante held up his hand. The room fell silent. The commander’s rich voice filled the Well of Angels.

  ‘I beg your indulgence, brothers of the Blood. My brother Asante, captain of our battle-barge the Blade of Vengeance, requests that he be permitted to issue the first challenge. Do any here object?’

  A resounding cheer answered the question.

  ‘Very well,’ said Dante. ‘Whom do you challenge, Captain Asante?’

  Asante walked around the base of the dais until he stood face to face with Erwin. He stared, stony faced.

  ‘I challenge Captain Erwin, of the Angels Excelsis.’

  Erwin stood.

  ‘Do you accept, Captain Erwin?’ asked Dante.

  Erwin smiled widely. ‘Of course,’ he said, and drained his wine.

  By mutual agreement and effort, the tables around the Ring of Heaven were removed. When space had been cleared to hold a crowd, some Space Marines headed up into the lushness of the Verdis Elysia, whose multiple levels and uneven slopes offered better vantage points to watch the coming duel.

  Asante walked through a metal gate held open by a human serf and down steps coiled around the arena wall to the sandy floor. Erwin followed. Space Marines crowded the edge of the arena as they descended. Asante paced, shucking off his robe to stand in soft trousers and heavy boots. His pale chest was massive with muscle. A big scar ran diagonally from top left to bottom right, a light grey track over the darkness of the black carapace under his skin. His body servant scooped up the robe and took it away.

  Erwin took off his own outer robe with more care. Underneath he wore a light vest. He was surprised how angry Asante appeared. The Blood Angels were supposed to be among the calmer of Sanguinius’ progeny, but compared to Erwin’s own Chapter, Asante was short tempered.