The Devastation of Baal

by Guy Haley

  The Space Marines wandered apart, each heading by unintentional degree for different parts of the reactor hall. The floor was soft with guano. No one had come to the cave in a long time. There were signs of ancient occupation. Platforms stepping up one side made the basis of a tall ossuary, and the wall was hidden by neatly stacked bones. Seth approached it. The bones were brittle with great age, but the marks of butchery were clear on them. These people had been cannibalised.

  Jool meanwhile had drifted towards the back of the cave. His light fell on jury-rigged catwalks and collapsed shelters made of metal sheeting. The slumped shape of a reactor housing loomed large as the rising Baalite moons in front of him. He saw something, and made for it in a straight line.

  ‘Here! Lord Seth, come.’ He beckoned.

  Seth grumbled in his throat. Jool waited before a high wall adorned with broken shrines. Something had been written upon the surface. It had long ago corroded away.

  ‘Galael was a considered man, like yourself, Lord Seth,’ said Jool, searching the surface of the wall. ‘He was a great scholar in his own right, and although he had no psychic ability of his own, the librarius was always his passion. We have a reputation for savagery, and it is well earned. I speak to you now in calm, but once in combat we find it impossible to control our passions. The Blood Angels have their graces and virtues. Once we had a similar system to hold our fury in check. It no longer works. Our wrath at the enemies of mankind grows unchecked, but our librarius remains important to us, as do histories. There is knowledge of the old times there, gathered from this hall by Galael. Galael’s chronicle is at the heart of our collection. In it he wrote extensively of what he learned from his people, before time and circumstance separated us from Baal forever.’

  Jool pointed at the corroded wall.

  ‘The chronicles say that in this place the records of the people were held, engraved into the metal of the fallen stars after the war. They are gone now, but I have longed to look upon the place where they were once displayed, for I know the story they told by heart.’

  Seth looked over the pitted metal. Fragments of text were visible, curves of letters wrapped around pockmarks, or extending from scales of oxidisation. Streaks of fossilised faecal matter covered much of the rest. Whatever the words had said was lost to time.

  Chrismsae looked blankly up at the wall. He was illiterate and lacked the imagination to see anything in the marks, but Jool’s words held him spellbound.

  ‘All the worlds in the Red Scar are subject to its humours,’ said Jool. ‘To dwell here at all, men must take their elixirs or live burrowed into the ground. That is true of all the planets within a hundred light years of this place, all save Baal. The configuration of the three bodies here deflects the Scar’s more terrible radiations. When men came here in the first great ships they were as nomads struggling over the desert, and this system was an oasis to them. Baal Primus was gentle enough, but Baal Secundus was a rarer prize yet, an analogue of Old Earth, and rich in biological diversity.’

  ‘And Baal?’ asked Seth.

  ‘Baal was as Baal is,’ said Jool. ‘Baal is eternal. The moons were settled, Baal was not, not at first. For many millennia, the records said, the worlds were isolated. The Scar kept them alone. No xenos civilisation or human world was within the range of their ships. Together they developed a culture whose richness was hinted at in these records, before they were lost.

  ‘Galael’s chronicle suggests eventually the people of Baal were reunited with the rest of humanity, and a golden age beckoned. All this is written in the most perfunctory manner, barely sufficient for context. It is strange, I believe, how people take for granted the norms of their time, never thinking that they will change, and so they leave unrecorded the things that would facilitate understanding of their lives, if only they were written down.’ Jool’s helm moved, his eye-lenses glowing in the dark, as if he could read what had once been written on the wall. ‘What is recorded in great detail is the manner of the fall. As war consumed the galaxy, the two moons were isolated again, but though their history was long, their memories were short, and the worlds could not recapture their earlier self-sufficiency. Famine ensued and Baal Secundus demanded that they, as the more populous world, be granted the protection of the orbital facilities of Baal Primus, and that Baal Primus be evacuated. Baal Primus refused, citing their greater military strength and resources as reasons for their own moon to be protected. The original record was unclear how the war began, but the orbitals were among the first targets. Maybe they were deliberately destroyed. I prefer the theory that an attempt to steal them led to their scuttling, and they fell from the sky, devastating Baal Primus. It is probably not true, but there is a certain amount of poetic hubris there.

  ‘Ironically, Baalind and Baalfora were safe from the turmoil of the wider galaxy. The Red Scar protected them, as it protected their degenerate descendants until the coming of the Great Angel. In the end they destroyed each other.’

  ‘This is only legend,’ said Seth. ‘And it is irrelevant.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ said Jool. ‘In Galael’s time, the writing was still readable. I tell you why it is relevant: the terrors of that time came as much from within as without, and this is something all we of Sanguinius’ line can understand. We struggle against the monsters of our minds. You, Gabriel Seth, have triumphed. Warriors like you…’ Jool placed one hand on Seth’s shoulder, the other on the back of the neck of Chrismsae. ‘You are a lesson to us all in hope.’

  ‘We are all damned,’ said Seth.

  ‘The Red Scar brings madness and death to all its worlds, but our fury is holy.’ He looked down at the junker. ‘It is Sanguinius’, and all the more powerful.’ Jool removed his hand from Seth’s pauldron, and held Chrismsae firmly. The youth moved uncomfortably, but did not dare break free. ‘Not all of us have such fortitude as you, Gabriel Seth. In some of us, the curse is much stronger.’

  Seth’s patience was running thin. ‘A waste of time. We are not saved. Our end comes. There. Is that what you wanted to hear? Let me tell you, I will not follow your road.’

  Jool laughed, a single grunt, and closed his fist, crushing the vertebrae in Chrismsae’s neck. Incredibly the boy still lived. Jool hoisted him into the air, vitae running out between his silver fingers. Chrismsae’s feet jerked in the air. His tongue, purple with trapped blood, poked stiffly from his mouth. His eyes rolled helplessly. Jool turned his attention upon the youth, watching him die with detached curiosity.

  ‘These legends hold a lesson for you, Seth. Allies die when they refuse to stand together. Bloodshed is the inevitable outcome. We will fight by your side. We dare not fight alongside any other force, but you Flesh Tearers are the same as us, pure and strong and wrathful. We will fight with you whether you want it or not.’

  Seth could have killed him then, in the dark. But the Knights of Blood would have attacked the Flesh Tearers, and two Chapters would be lost to the defence in fratricidal squabbles. He growled in frustration.

  ‘Will you drink with me, to seal our pact in blood?’ Jool held out Chrismsae’s corpse to him.

  ‘I will not,’ said Seth, even though saliva pooled in his mouth at the rich blood scent rising over the stench of guano.

  ‘Why not? They are cattle. We are the canids of the herder. Is it not right that we should feed from the herd?’

  ‘He was a wretch, but he did not have to die,’ said Seth. ‘You should not have killed him.’

  ‘How many similar innocents have your warriors butchered?’

  ‘Not in cold blood,’ said Seth. ‘This is why you are damned and I am not.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Jool. ‘What was his life? He would have died anyway. His end serves the Emperor better this way.’ With a tearing wrench, he ripped Chrismsae’s head free. Blood ran over his battered gauntlets. Seth’s mouth watered all the more. ‘Now, will you sup with me?’

&nb
sp; ‘No,’ said Seth. He clenched his jaw. His angel’s teeth extended and pricked at the soft meat of his inner lip. ‘I will not sup with you. I will not fight with you. Keep to your own positions. We shall stay on ours. There will be bloodshed if you disagree. Yours will be the first head I take.’

  Jool made a disparaging noise. ‘If you insist. Very well. We will venture no closer than three miles to your position.’

  ‘Too close,’ said Seth.

  ‘Shall we fight?’ said Jool.

  When Seth did not reply, Jool continued. ‘Then we keep to our common enemy. I will see you on the field of ­battle, Seth, as an ally. I have seen it.’

  He dropped Chrismsae’s mangled corpse and reached for his helm seals.

  ‘Now, please depart. I need to feed, and I prefer to be unobserved.’

  Seth was only too happy to oblige.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Angelic Sacrifice

  Blazing light flooded the throne room. A figure in burnished armour, his features obscured by the glare, stood before the Golden Throne. Awful machines pounded away in every quarter. Thousands of coffins wired into the mechanisms hid untold tales of suffering. The wrongness of the devices gnawed at Dante’s soul. In the central throne was a wizened figure for whose benefit this atrocity was committed, yet he was oblivious to it as he was to all else on the mortal plane. He sat unmoving as the golden warrior prepared for battle, yet another human life to be sacrificed for the Emperor.

  Something twisted towards the throne. The golden figure raised his sword.

  Darkness.

  Dante’s eyes slid open slowly. Disoriented, it took him a second to realise he was in his bedchamber in the Heaven­ward Redoubt of the Arx Angelicum, and not on Terra.

  He sat up. The sheets of his huge bed whispered off his skin.

  An extravagant clock ticked softly at the other side of his bedchamber. Dante had been asleep for three hours. Once, Dante was capable of fighting for days without rest. Now he took sleep when he could and woke weary from it. If he could, he would have enjoyed the Long Sleep.

  Corbulo warned him from the sarcophagi. There were risks for Dante hidden in the holy machines.

  Age. All down to his damned age.

  He rested his face in his hands. The texture of his wrinkled skin disturbed him, for a dreaming man never sees himself old. He remained that way for several minutes, breathing slowly, until the air passing in and out of his lungs absorbed his attention and calmed him.

  With a quick, decisive breath, he threw back the covers and rose from his bed. His muscles ached, an old man’s pains afflicting an immortal. Rotations of his shoulders worked out some of the stiffness, but by no means all.

  He thought to call for his equerry. Arafeo’s name died on his lips. The man was gone, aged from youth to senescence in what seemed to be minutes to Dante. He had put off appointing a new equerry from the blood thralls. There had not seemed to be much point.

  He dressed in a robe stiff with embroidered angels and fetched himself a cup of wine laced with blood, as was the custom of the Blood Angels. Unremarkable, save that Dante had eschewed the drinking of blood for long centuries until these last months.

  Dante swirled the wine around the goblet beneath his nose, allowing the scent of spices and vitae to stir his sluggish hearts. He shut his eyes to savour it.

  The smell of blood. The smell of life.

  He had had the dream of the golden warrior many times. Whether it was a genuine vision, he could not tell.

  Dante kept the dream to himself, knowing that its recurrence would be seen as egocentricity on his part. This need for the figure to be him, for him to have one truly worthy deed to do before his life was done… It was a weakness, and he did not care to share that. He was amused by how much he tried to convince himself he was the warrior. He had never seen the face, though from the form of the armour the figure was a Space Marine, and not a mortal or a member of the Adeptus Custodes. Did he see wings? He discounted them. If it were Dante, where was his axe? Well, Dante theorised, he might have lost it. Besides, visions were figurative, not literal. Unfortunately, they shared that characteristic with dreams.

  He smiled at his conceit that he would save the Emperor.

  While this desire he had was undoubtedly indulgent, he needed it. He needed a reason to continue, to fight the daily woe and exhaustion his position burdened him with. If there was harm in that, it was no great one.

  Today was different. He mulled it over as he sipped his wine, puzzled. One detail of the vision had changed. Each time when he had seen the golden warrior, the Emperor’s sword was upon his unmoving knee as it had reputedly been for ten millennia. That last time, it was missing.

  He feared that to be a bad omen.

  Almost in confirmation of his misgivings, a bell tolled in the distance.

  His head came up suddenly. The sound drifted from hearing and back, inaudible in that deeply buried room to all but a Space Marine’s ears. He strode from his bedchamber, bursting through double ebony doors into his private dining room. His feet padded over mosaics of carnelian, all the detail given in differing shades of red. The tolling bell grew louder as he marched to the glass doors leading onto his balcony and went out into the Well of Angels.

  The deep throat of the volcano plunged away. Graceful patterns of lumen light illuminated the plaza thousands of feet below. The moist scents of the Verdis Elysia drifted up from broad terraces.

  The well was a place of peace, until the bell of war rang. It resounded loudly round the shaft. From high above a wild howling competed with the stately tolling.

  Dante raised his eyes to the oval of lilac morning sky trapped by the Arx Murus. Towers pointed upward like teeth. One in particular drew his gaze.

  The inmates of Amareo were awake, all of them baying and shrieking for blood, their monstrous cries sounding throughout the fortress monastery.

  Their howls were a sure sign war was upon them.

  Dante hurried back inside to a hardlined vox panel set into the far wall. A knock stopped him before he reached it.

  ‘Enter!’ he called.

  Sanguinary Guard opened carved doors of anthracite. Beyond lay his state rooms, banqueting hall, armoury, private chapel and other chambers of his palace.

  Captain Borgio stood in the doorway, armoured for battle.

  ‘Borgio, the damned scream for blood. It has begun, has it not?’

  Borgio nodded. ‘My lord, I have urgent communication from the picket fleets. Our long range augur buoys have been tripped across multiple coreward sectors.’

  Borgio looked almost apologetic as he delivered the news.

  ‘The tyranids are here.’

  Fully armed and armoured, Dante marched towards the Basilica Sanguinarum, the full strength of his Sanguinary Guard flanking him. Music did its best to conceal the snarling and anguished shouts of those in the grip of the thirst rising from the cathedral, but it could not. Nothing could, not the mass, chanted repetition of the Moripatris as the scions of Sanguinius knelt in prayer to stave off madness, or the clangorous peals shaking the fortress. The bell in the Citadel Reclusiam had been joined by others. They would not cease ringing until the invasion began.

  The Arx Angelicum was frantic with activity. There were not sufficient holy spaces for all the Space Marines in the basilica, so the brothers of the Blood knelt in groups wherever they could find space. Under the solemn guidance of their Chaplains, they prayed for mastery over the Black Rage. The stirrings of the thirst had come upon them unexpectedly with the arrival of the hive fleet. Blood thralls ran about everywhere, preparing for imminent attack. Only the servitors seemed unhurried, but the sheer numbers of them clumping about betrayed the gravity of the situation.

  ‘Make way! Make way!’ shouted Sepharan. ‘Make way!’

  None had difficulty obeying the order. The corrido
rs were cleared instantly, allowing Dante’s party to tramp by.

  At the gates of the Basilica Sanguinarum various dignitaries awaited the commander. They too parted. All but one.

  Chapter Master Geron of the Angels Numinous stood alone before the giant gates. He held his helmet clamped under one arm. His face was pale and contorted with fury.

  ‘Stand aside, Master Geron,’ said Sepharan. ‘The commander will pass.’

  ‘No,’ said Geron, stiffly shaking his head.

  ‘Stand aside!’ commanded Sepharan. The Sanguinary Guard raised their angelus boltguns.

  ‘You threaten me?’ said Geron in astonishment. ‘When you allow this abomination?’ He pointed behind him to the gates. From inside came the roaring and pitiful shouting of Space Marines in the grip of the Black Rage. ‘You treat them to this honour? The fallen should be incarcerated in the Tabernacle of Repentance. They must undergo the shriving before they are expended. They shame us all with their weakness.’ His features quivered with emotion. ‘An angel should be pure and noble. These mindless brutes are an embarrassment.’

  ‘Stand aside!’ demanded Sepharan. ‘You will not be asked again.’

  Dante stepped forward and rested a calming hand on Sepharan’s arm.

  ‘Geron,’ he said. ‘While your warriors fight for me, all will be accorded the same respect as the brothers in my Chapter.’

  Ordamael spoke up from his position by the gates. ‘They are blessed in this moment with Sanguinius’ vision.’

  ‘They are cursed, and unclean,’ said Geron, rounding on the Chaplain. ‘I will not have this.’

  ‘You granted me command,’ said Dante. ‘Make any attempt to remove your warriors from the basilica, and I will kill you myself. Do you really wish to plunge our brotherhood into war as the Great Devourer bears down on us? Show pity to your men. They are your brothers yet.’

  Geron snarled. Dante’s Sanguinary Guard interposed themselves between the two Chapter Masters. Geron made to move forward, but his own Sanguinary high priest stepped to his side and firmly took his elbow.