The Devastation of Baal

by Guy Haley

  ‘It goes against our beliefs, my brother,’ he said, low and urgently, ‘but now is not the time.’

  Geron gave Dante a look of pure fury. ‘I should have expected no less from you, Dante, who openly consorts with the Knights of Blood and invites the savage Gabriel Seth into his confidence. You stand shoulder to shoulder with those who would embrace the rage.’ He spat on the floor. The marble sizzled with the acid in his spittle.

  ‘You will obey me,’ said Dante. ‘Stand aside.’

  ‘For honour’s sake, I will obey, as I voted to obey,’ said Geron. He pointed at Dante. ‘But I will not forget this slight.’

  Geron’s priest moved him to the side.

  ‘Pray open the gates!’ boomed Sepharan.

  The Basilica Sanguinarum’s high portal creaked open, letting out the full volume of the howling of the damned.

  Space Marines of many Chapters were still being brought into the cathedral as Dante entered. Some arrived in a state of calm, glazed confusion, or were brought in unconscious. Others needed to be wrestled into place.

  ‘This is all of them?’ asked Dante of Ordamael.

  ‘The Moripatris continues, my lord, but new incidences of rage are tailing away. This will be the majority.’

  Major conflict was always presaged by the awakening of the prisoners of the Tower of Amareo. That such debased beasts should be so close to Sanguinius frankly horrified Dante, but by dint of their hyperactive gene-seed their sixth sense was sharper even than that of the Librarians, and their rage the first to kindle. When war spread its red wings, the prisoners of Amareo heralded it.

  If the Amareans awoke and bayed for living flesh, the Blood Angels knew to expect their own visions. They prepared themselves as best they could, steeled for the ritual of the Moripatris, for the memories of Sanguinius intruded strongly when the Amareans sang. In those times it was certain that several of their number would succumb to the Black Rage and be lost.

  Only this time it was not several who had fallen. It was not dozens, as the worst crises could precipitate. It was hundreds, far too many to be contained in the chapels used for the purpose of blessing the damned.

  The cathedral was full of afflicted brothers from every Chapter. From differing brotherhoods in life, in their living death they found a common hell. Their armour was black and crossed with red saltires, with little but their badges to show from which Chapter they hailed. It was a sorrowful spectacle of unity that brought the magnitude of the curse home to all who saw it.

  The damned behaved according to their character. Some struggled too violently to be armoured, and knelt naked on the stone. Others were sunk deep into trances or prayer. The tranquil yet authoritative words of two dozen Chaplains calmed others. The states of many were not constant, but shifted from one mode of behaviour to another as their self-control waxed and waned, and so more than half were restrained by heavy chains about the wrists, ankles and necks.

  Dante took his position at the head of the basilica, beneath the statue of Sanguinius. Ordamael began his shouted oratory as soon as he was in position. There was little ceremony to the ritual. The nature of the congregation demanded it be concluded swiftly.

  ‘May Sanguinius watch over you, as you enter the last trial of your life,’ began Ordamael. ‘May the Emperor use you while your arms remain strong. May your fury fire you as you fight your last.’

  Ordamael intoned the prayer loudly. Calming choral music softened the atmosphere, leaching away thoughts of blood and replacing them with contemplative sorrow. Gradually the swollen Death Company became quiet as deeply embedded hypno indoctrination was called into activation by the words. It was potent but it would not last. Serfs from various Chapters came out from hiding in the cathedral aisle and moved swiftly among the damned, affixing death ribbons to newly repainted armour.

  ‘In the name of humanity do you tread the dark road to redemption,’ continued Ordamael. ‘And as your enemies flee from your righteous wrath, shall you find peace in death.’

  The most violent battle-brothers were quiescent now, and could be approached with minimum risk. Well-practised hands undid chains, quickly completing arming rituals while the Death Company were lulled by the Litany of Doom.

  ‘By your deeds shall ye be known. By your rage shall you forge your deeds.’

  Other prayers were whispered by other Chaplains. Ordamael was not the most senior Chaplain in the host; there were over a dozen Reclusiarchs at Baal alone, but the others deferred to his authority, as highest-ranking Blood Angels Chaplain. He was the Paternis Sanguis, master of the Tower of Amareo. The title carried great weight.

  The serfs and thralls withdrew as quickly as they had emerged from their hiding places. The Chaplains began to rouse their charges, unlocking their chains from the floor and bidding them get to their feet.

  ‘In blood, there is life,’ said Ordamael, reaching the last stanza. ‘In life, there is thirst for blood. In death, the thirst dies. Sanguinius be with us, as he is with you.’

  The prayer varied between Chapters. The sentiments were the same.

  Specially adapted servitors came to the aid of the Chaplains, strong enough to restrain the damned should they go berserk, expendable enough that it did not matter if they failed.

  Ordamael beckoned to his peers. At the rear of the cathedral, the three Rage Gates opened onto large lifter cages, ready to convey the damned to the chambers in the Dungeons of Amareo where they would be housed until needed.

  Dante bowed his head in respect as they filed out. The damned were soothed by their Chaplains, though they were already growing restive again. Dante wondered for a moment what Lemartes might do with such a force, but Lemartes was at Diamor, light years away.

  The last of the damned was shepherded into the lifters and his chains secured in place on the wall. The more aggressive were beginning to shout again, uttering heartbreaking words first spoken ten millennia ago, and repeated many times since.

  ‘Why?’ one demanded to know. ‘Why did you betray us, Horus?’

  The gates slammed shut, cutting off his question.

  There was no answer to give.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Void War

  Situated beneath the Citadel Reclusiam at the top of the Heavenward Redoubt was the Prime Strategium of the Blood Angels.

  Pale red sunlight filtered through armourglass windows twenty feet thick. Wide horizontal slits, cut through the rock on the other side of the glass, gave sweeping views out of both sides, into the desert, and the plunging Well of Angels.

  Several hundred people were present, and a tense hush was upon them. Servitors, mortals and Space Marines were engaged in duties that could decide the fate not only of Baal and the Blood Angels, but of the segmentum beyond. Each piece of the war machine was as vital as the next, whether human thrall, cogitator sub-array or decorated captain of the Adeptus Astartes. Commander Dante understood that better than most. Under his purview they operated excellently.

  A dozen separate command stations, individually tasked with overseeing an aspect of Baal’s defence, were situated around the central hololithic tacticarium. About its eerie projection sphere were gathered a band of heroes of rare renown. Many were regarded as the epitome of Imperial virtue in their own right, but even these great warriors waited upon Commander Dante’s word.

  Dante stood upon a raised platform, his eyes trained on the projection along with everyone else’s. The sphere depicted the Baal system. The red star Balor and its worlds; the triplets of the Baalite subsystem, the solitary gas giant Set, the clumped asteroid field that separated outer and inner system, and the cold, distant world of Amair alone on its six-hundred-year journey around the star. Balor was not a fruitful sun. It had few children.

  ‘Expand the field of observation,’ said Dante. ‘Show me the outer bounds.’

  A quiet whirr of lenses pulled back the view. Balor
shrank to the size of a pomegranate. Baal and its moons were bright dots circling each other. The other worlds glinted. Only gaseous Set was big enough to see as more than a point of light.

  Far out at the edge of the projection field, where the image began to lose integrity and focus, was Balor’s cometary belt depicted on the hololith as a swarm of tiny dots moving with the agitation of bacilli in a drop of water.

  Just inside this ultimate shell of the system was the Space Marine fleet. The assembled navies of nigh three score Chapters divided into four battle groups. They waited at a distance from one another. The direction of the tyranid fleet’s approach was known, where exactly it would breach the cometary wall was not.

  On a human scale, the ships of the Imperium were colossi, miles-long chunks of metal as large as cities, home to tens of thousands of cyborgs, thralls and Space Marines. In the vastness of space they were specks. Shifting shoals of data tags displayed their position.

  By Dante’s left shoulder stood the Master of Interpretations, the blood thrall liaison with the astropaths of the Chapter. Vox signals would take hours to reach the fleet. By the power of ancient science, hololithic communication was instantaneous across in-system distances, but fragile in the face of the shadow in the warp. The astropaths would be the last line of communication with the fleets. But all means, electronic or immaterial, were vulnerable to the tyranids.

  An earthquake rumbled through Baal, upsetting the projection. The Arx Angelicum’s stone moaned.

  ‘They are close,’ said Captain Essus of the Blood Swords. ‘They trouble Baal. This is the sign of their coming, the gravitic pulse.’

  ‘What of the warp?’ asked Dante quietly.

  ‘The shadow is stronger, but our astropaths are still in contact with the fleet, my lord,’ said the Master of Interpretations.

  ‘When will they come?’ asked Geron. His tension spoke for them all.

  No one replied. All of them remained focused on the hololith. Dante had set his pieces on the board. Twenty-one battle-barges, ninety-four strike cruisers and several hundred smaller craft would intercept the hive fleet under the command of Bellerophon aboard the Blade of Vengeance. They would strike, cripple as many large vessels as they could, then fall back to Baal. Six thousand Space Marines were aboard those fleets. Twelve thousand were on Baal, six thousand on Baal Secundus and five thousand on Baal Primus. They were the largest gathering of the Blood since the Horus Heresy. Time would tell if it would be enough.

  They stood for hours staring at the hololith. It was almost a relief when the first blinking red dot of enemy contact sprang into life at the edge of the system.

  ‘They have come,’ said Dante.

  A choir of thralls began the ‘Psalm protective against planetary investment’. The lights changed. Threat indicators ratcheted up from null to beta-severe.

  The first red dot was alone for but a moment. Hundreds more began to blink across a wide segment of Baal’s system edge. Many were feeder-scouts, the solitary eyes of the hive fleet. Several proved to be the tips of attack tendrils. Behind them came long, sinuous ribbons of other dots, questing for prey. They were forming up across a band of space little over a single astronomical unit wide. Already the Space Marine fleets were manoeuvring to counter.

  Giant machines within the Arx Murus growled, pushing up huge blocks of stone into the window slots. The room shook with the effort of moving so many thousand tons of rock. The red light of Balor became a sliver fine as a diffuse las-beam. Emergency lumens crackled on. Machine lights were stars in the gloom.

  ‘We are at war,’ said Dante.

  Erwin sat on the edge of his command throne, unblinkingly staring out of the oculus of the Splendid Pinion. Other ships of his Chapter waited with him, their bristling weapons casting black shadows on their sides in the starshine of distant Balor. The glow from the Red Scar was almost as bright as the sun that far out. Erwin hated looking into it, it was like gazing at a suppurating wound, but still he could not tear himself away.

  ‘Any sign yet?’

  ‘None, as there was none three minutes ago when you asked, captain,’ said Achemen. The serviles were glad he answered. None of them liked to speak with the captain before battle. Not even the five battle-brothers of Achemen’s squad stationed as guards on the deck.

  Erwin snarled. ‘All this damned waiting! Where are they?’

  His thirst teased him, fuelling his frustration so that his skin crawled under his bodyglove. His fist tensed so hard his armoured fingertips pushed in the metal ribbing covering his palm.

  ‘Damn them!’ he said. ‘Damn them!’ He was panting quickly and shallowly. He could sense the thirst of the others on the ship and vessels around him. Battle-hunger was the worst form of starvation.

  ‘They will be here soon enough, brother,’ said Achemen.

  ‘Do not patronise me, first sergeant!’ snapped Erwin. ‘You feel the same wrath as I.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Achemen. ‘But I control it better.’

  Erwin’s head whipped round at this impudence. He bared angel’s teeth already at full extension.

  ‘My lords!’ The Servile of the Watch spoke up. ‘I have hundreds of incoming contacts.’

  Tocsins sounded. On the tactical displays of the command deck a swarm of red lights made itself known.

  ‘Revision. There are thousands,’ said the Servile of the Watch. ‘Tens of thousands.’

  Erwin leaned forward. Nothing was visible in the oculus, only the vileness of the Scar and the occasional glint of a comet turning about its axis.

  ‘How fast?’ asked Erwin.

  ‘Super-light speed, my lord,’ said the servile. ‘My augurs show massive gravitic disturbances at several distinct points.’

  ‘Adjust orientation towards the nearest,’ said Erwin.

  ‘Adjusting,’ said the Servile of the Helm.

  As the servile spoke these words, Erwin witnessed a rippling of the view forward, the bending of light due to manipulation of gravity. Something was hiding behind the distortion.

  ‘There they are,’ said Erwin. ‘There they are!’

  ‘All vessels of the Angels Excelsis. Prepare for battle.’

  Erwin snorted. Follordark had never been one to make grandiose speeches.

  The rippling cut out. For a moment the oculus was full of streaks. These compressed themselves into the solid shapes of tyranid bio-ships that shone wetly with deep space ice. Small, teardrop-shaped vessels bristling with sensor spines were breaking from the fore, heading back towards the shelter of the vessels coming behind.

  Erwin laughed savagely and hammered his hand onto the lion’s head of his throne arm. Untold thousands of ships were ahead of him. Green glows lit up behind them as they engaged bioplasma drives, and advanced towards Baal.

  The vox came alive with orders flying between dozens of ships.

  ‘Attack!’ commanded Follordark.

  The Splendid Pinion lurched as its engine stacks burned full ahead.

  ‘At last,’ grinned Erwin. ‘A worthy foe.’

  Aboard the Blade of Vengeance, Bellerophon oversaw the unfolding void war through the ship’s vast main hololith.

  ‘Angels Vermillion interdiction force!’ commanded ­Bellerophon. ‘Come about and bring weapons to bear on advancing tendril twelve-alpha.’

  The tactical displays of the Blade of Vengeance were a maddening blur of vessels. Bellerophon squinted at them in turn. The four battle groups had performed to their plan, coming together as a square, their squadrons of ships forming the towers of a vertical castle. Smaller groups split off from the main, darting out into the onrushing swarm to destroy prime targets and sow disruption among the invaders through boarding actions and rapid torpedo strikes. This tactic still had its value, though it was no longer as efficacious as it had been; the tyranids had identified the ploy some years ago and adapted their c
ommand net, spreading back-up synaptic nodes to lesser ships. Discovering which housed them was a mixture of careful observation and Emperor-guided guesswork.

  The Blade of Vengeance flew in tandem with its sister, the Bloodcaller. Together they put out a tremendous amount of fire. Within half an hour of them encountering the lead elements of Leviathan, space was full of broken shell fragments and giant chunks of flesh. Frozen body fluids drifted in clouds between the corpses of bio-ships. But for every ship destroyed, there were two dozen more to take its place. The greatest of the living vessels were truly titanic, dwarfing even the battle-barges. Vast and slug-like, the Norn ships were encrusted in ancient ice and stolen asteroids glued together with excreted resins that was as good as any armour. The hive ships had no energy fields, but protected inside their jackets of stone and frost they sailed through the full fire of Imperial vessels with little ill effect. One lay ahead; the Blade of Vengeance ploughed through dozens of smaller vessels in an attempt to intercept it before it broke through the fleet of the Golden Sons.

  Tocsins and alarms chimed, rang, beeped and shouted. Though the tyranids’ weaponry was less potent than that of the Imperium, they had a lot more of it. The void shields flexed and thrummed to the impact of torpedo spines and living missiles. Fast hunter beasts streaked past on the green fires of bioplasmic jets, spitting barbed quills from dripping orifices. Convulsing tubes ranged down the sides of the largest ships cast out giant, gnarled teeth by peristaltic motion that burst on hulls to unleash hordes of metal-hungry creatures. But in the main, the tyranids neglected ranged combat. Giant nautiloids vented glittering clouds of gas, moving with deceptive slowness towards the Imperial battle line, their five-hundred-yard-long tentacles extended to entrap ships. They seemed so ­cumbersome, but when close, sinews snapped out with such force the tentacles buried themselves in plasteel, and the Space Marine ships were reeled in, their void shields useless. Bellerophon watched as one of the Blade of Vengeance’s escorts was caught. It bucked in the fleshly snare, engines blazing, but it was doomed, engulfed by dozens more tentacles and broken in two.