The Devastation of Baal

by Guy Haley

  Ka’Bandha snorted again. ‘You have no business here, Calistarius,’ he said mockingly.

  ‘Then how am I here?’ shouted Mephiston back. ‘We abjure you. Depart from this gate, by the will of the Great Angel.’

  By way of answer the daemon threw back his head and howled with rage so the ground shook and the sky ­rumbled with answering thunder.

  ‘Your broken-winged lord has no power over me,’ the daemon snarled. ‘I am coming for your head, little Cali­starius,’ he said, pointing his coiled whip at Mephiston. ‘Baal shall fall, the angels will see their true nature, and Khorne shall rejoice! Your legion is gathered, after all this time. Such a fine harvest of warriors for the Blood God!’ He looked through the rift, and spied the others in the cave. ‘All of you will fall to your knees and gladly follow me before the eighth day of my manifestation is out.’

  Ka’Bandha’s yellow eye passed over Rhacelus. His soul shivered. The daemon’s gaze provoked the rage in him. His mouth thirsted for blood, his soul for battle, and in his mind’s eye unwelcome flashes of wars fought millennia before rose up to trouble him.

  His comrades were not so aged as he. Rhacelus was steeped in the warp; centuries of experience gave him a wisdom and resilience the others could not claim. The web binding the coven shuddered under Ka’Bandha’s regard. Several of the company screamed with rage, but none fell. All stood firm.

  ‘My kind have resisted your temptations since the dawn of the Imperium,’ said Mephiston. ‘You will not best us. Begone from here. This is not your time.’

  ‘I will pass.’

  ‘Turn back!’

  Ka’Bandha laughed in a savage, brutal mirth. ‘Then let the harvest be of blood rather than warriors! You may die rather than serve easily enough. Blood is its own reward. Khorne cares not whence it flows, only that it flows.’

  The beast swung his axe at Mephiston. Psychic energy blasted out where blade met man. Skulls, dislodged by the shockwave from the ground of Khorne’s realm, flew in every direction and rang hollow musical notes as they rained down upon the sand and bone of the false earth.

  Within the cavern the impact shivered out from Mephiston. Bonds until now invisible flared brightly, joining the breast of each Librarian to his fellows with crackling arcs of power. Immaterial energies and the force of the blow together dissipated into the crystals, making the rock formations sing. The mountain shook. The air shimmered with volcanic heat and flaming cinders burst from the psychic web. But Mephiston did not fall.

  Ka’Bandha roared in outrage, and cast his beady eye over the assembled Librarians.

  ‘He who renounces his loyalty to the dead Emperor shall be rewarded with immortal life, so swear I, most beloved of Khorne,’ said Ka’Bandha.

  No one replied, but Rhacelus felt, through the heat and the rage, a faint wavering.

  ‘Do you see, little Calistarius, they are tempted!’ The last word became a grunt, and he hewed with his axe again at Mephiston. Warp-made iron clashed with the dark radiance of Mephiston’s soul. Power blasted into the material universe through the rift. A Librarian of the Golden Sons died, his eyes bursting as flame consumed him from within. Rhacelus was driven to his knees, and he cried out in agony. Again that flicker of uncertainty. He looked out across the crystal cave, seeking out the weakness in the web.

  ‘Twice you have struck, twice I remained unbowed,’ said Mephiston. ‘Now it is my turn.’

  Mephiston drew Vitarus. The silver steel of the blade blazed with heat. Ka’Bandha swung again, and this time Mephiston met the blow with his own weapon.

  Reality moaned at the shock. Crystals sang and shattered. Fires burned in the very stone. The mountain shook upon its root, and the walls of the Ruberica cracked.

  Ka’Bandha was driven back, howling with anger. He recovered, and ran at the rift, seeking to bypass Mephiston and force his way through to Baal.

  The weakness in the psychic web grew. Strands of power shrivelled away, and Rhacelus’ gaze fell upon Antros.

  The Librarian stood transfixed, and Rhacelus knew in his heart that he was enchanted; his face was slack, and one hand was rising slowly to welcome the beast in.

  ‘Antros! Concentrate! Let not the promises of the daemon sway you!’ shouted Rhacelus, quoting the Lexicanium’s Rule.

  Antros’ perfect mouth moved, forming the words of a prayer.

  ‘For into evil a man shall fall, though evil he seek to avoid, if he once hearkens to the black tongue of the Never­born,’ he said along with Rhacelus.

  Rhacelus drew on strength he thought long exhausted, shoring up the weak point in the psychic web and lending his power to Mephiston.

  Ka’Bandha forced the gate. Mephiston swung with Vitarus, and the blade passed out of the rift into the Realm of Khorne. Where it touched the leg of the angel of red fire, the flames went out, the daemons shrieked, and the portal slammed shut.

  But Ka’Bandha was not defeated. His head and one arm emerged into the crystal cave, swiping at the Lord of Death. He roared and bellowed, his shouts breaking crystals and bursting the eardrums of the Space Marines present. The Librarians howled in agony, all of them; more died, but the stronger fought through the pain, and into Ka’Bandha’s fiery breath they cast their spears of light and lances of blood, wounding the beast. Mephiston raised his sword again, sweeping it down. It was too late.

  The flaw sown by Antros’ wavering ruptured, and the Librarians reeled as their fellowship broke.

  With a mighty heave, Ka’Bandha hauled himself through, breaking open the rift and gate both. He stood a moment in triumph, his roar shaking the mountain, until the wrath of Sanguinius given form blasted at him from every Librarian, and he fell out of sight into a space between the worlds.

  The rift slammed shut. The mountain gave out a final tortured grinding, and there came into the chamber the rumble of falling stone as it shook. The Librarians were staggered from their feet. Wild psychic energies lashed around the Ruberica. Crystals the size of landspeeders crashed from their beds, crushing men under their weight, and the ruby light dimmed to blackness.

  Slowly, the shaking subsided. The mountain returned to equilibrium. The clatter of falling boulders outside the cavern came to a stop. Air moved and huffed around the cave as the bones of the earth ceased their pained grinding and settled into new configurations.

  Rhacelus got to his feet slowly. His body was unharmed, but there was a deep, horrendous ache in his soul.

  ‘Mephiston!’ he cried.

  Other voices spoke, calling to their brothers. Groans answered some, and others, silence.

  Fallen crystal crunched under Rhacelus’ feet as he made his way to the podium. Light returned, fitfully at first. More of his brothers had fallen than he had expected. They lay lifeless, blood leaking from their ears and nostrils. Two were in a deadly embrace, hands locked about each other’s throats. Others had clawed their own faces off in fits of rage, breaking open the skulls beneath. Blood was everywhere. The survivors were collecting themselves. All were shaken, no matter their might. Half were dead, the rest would never be the same again.

  Mephiston lived. He crouched upon the podium. Vitarus was driven point down into the stone. He gripped its quillions as if they were the only things in the galaxy that could support him. His head was bowed, and his cloak pooled around him like broken wings.

  ‘My lord?’ said Rhacelus. ‘Mephiston?’

  The look the Lord of Death gave Rhacelus would haunt him until the end of his days.

  ‘We failed. We were not strong enough. Ka’Bandha has come through into the world of men.’

  Rhacelus nodded. It was as much as he had feared. ‘Is he on Baal?’

  Mephiston groaned and hauled himself up. ‘No. I do not think so, but he will emerge close by. We should leave this place, warn Commander Dante. And perhaps we might make amends for our failure here through the slaughter of xenos
.’

  Rhacelus looked behind him. The entrance to the cave was blocked by giant slabs of rock and crushed crystal. ‘We have other concerns to address first, my lord. We must dig our way out, and that will take a long time.’ He returned his eyes to Mephiston. ‘I fear the battle for Baal is finished for us.’

  Chapter Twenty

  At the Third Line

  ‘D-d-d-d-da,’ stammered the boy.

  Uigui stirred out of a half sleep haunted by screaming monsters. When he remembered where he was, he was eager to get back to his nightmare.

  ‘What?’ he said. They were out beyond the wall, stuck behind the feeble defence line in the face of the tyranids and the frigid desert night. The moons shone blandly in a sky crowded with alien horrors. The guns had never stopped, not once, and the shields of the angels’ home guttered unnatural flame in response to the living bombardment. Horrible shrieks sounded in the desert, the sound of tortured artillery screaming as it fired. On the far side of the moat blood-chilling screeches and cries haunted the night.

  But no assault came.

  He felt intolerably heavy, and wearied beyond comprehension.

  ‘W-w-w-why are we waiting here? I-i-i-it’s cold. I’m scared. W-w-why did they make us come back?’

  The boy was all a-twitch, shoulders rising and rotating with a will of their own. It was always that way when he was scared. His son, lost to him now, would never have asked such stupid questions, but would have astounded Uigui with his insights. Nor would he have writhed so piteously. Uigui missed his son, and had no time for the boy’s whimpering.

  ‘We’re the meat in the trap,’ he said viciously. ‘We are here, in front of their vile xenos noses, right where they can smell us. They want to eat us, don’t you see? We’re softer meat than the angels in their armour.’

  ‘Stop it, Da, stop it! You’re scaring me!’ The boy clamped his fists over his ears and began to rock on his haunches.

  Uigui gave him a look of disgust and spat. His mouth tasted of battle smoke and xenos fluids. He wiped his arm across his mouth.

  A ghostly white face loomed out of the darkness. ­Uigui’s stomach spasmed at the sight.

  An angel in black with a skull for a helmet stared down at them. He towered over the defence line’s crenellations, but seemed to have no fear of the enemy picking him off.

  ‘What is this noise?’ the angel said, with a voice as deep as the night.

  For a moment Uigui thought it was the warrior-priest he had encountered in Angel’s Fall, before all this began, when they were ignorant of the coming threat. Then he realised his armour was styled differently, and his voice was sterner. He tried to tell himself there was a man inside the power armour, but his mind would not accept it. Uigui cursed the attention the warrior-priests were paying him of late.

  Uigui threw himself down, tugging the boy after him to grovel at the angel’s feet.

  ‘I am sorry, my lord! Forgive us.’

  Uigui’s face pressed into the sand. It was strangely scented. Baal was so alien to him.

  ‘Our creed teaches us that only we can forgive ourselves. Hold your silence, or you will hurry your death. Do you wish that?’

  ‘I am sorry, my lord, the boy is frightened.’

  The angel’s breathing rasped from his augmitter. Uigui risked a glance upward. The angel was a mountain of black armour lit by fire and void shield light, topped with a skull like a forbidding shrine, in whose sockets fires glowed.

  ‘Back to your post,’ said the warrior. ‘It is normal for your kind to know fear. Trust in the Great Angel, aim truly, and all will be well.’

  Uigui dragged himself back up. The angel watched him curiously.

  ‘I cannot move my arms and legs as I would,’ said Uigui, explaining his sluggish reaction. ‘This weapon weighs as much as an anvil. We cannot run. This accursed weight. Baal is a place for angels. We sin by being here.’

  ‘You are not cursed. It is only the world – the mass of this planet is higher than of the moons. It is gravity that afflicts you, not a curse,’ said the angel.

  The boy, for all his idiocy, was quicker than Uigui, and was already back at the firing slit.

  ‘M-m-m-my lord,’ said the boy.

  ‘Silence!’ hissed Uigui.

  ‘Let him speak!’ growled the angel. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Th-th-th-th-there is something out there,’ he said.

  The boy pointed out into the dark. Uigui squinted, but could see nothing amid the shattered corpses of the enemy on the far shore. The thirstwater glinted with the light of reflected fire.

  The angel swung his head around and looked out. ‘Where?’ he said.

  The boy pointed.

  As the boy raised his finger, a beast plummeted shrieking from the sky, splashing into the thirstwater with wings folded.

  Another followed, then another.

  ‘Movement on the far bank!’ said the Space Marine.

  Uigui did not have the advantage of Space Marine eyes, and saw nothing beyond the pale, streaking shapes of creatures raining out of the sky.

  The angel said something to his brothers via his armour’s devices. A ripple of guns sounded from the home of the angels, and the sky was filled with slowly falling stars that flooded the desert with harsh light.

  Then Uigui saw. A living carpet of ’gaunts crept towards the moat on their bellies, smaller beasts the size of rats moving stealthily among them.

  ‘They are attempting to cross. Open fire!’ shouted Ordamael.

  Guns spoke all down the line, the cracking reports of thousands of lasguns intermingled with the isolated flat bangs of bolters.

  The flares prompted a reaction. All at once thousands of winged creatures began to throw themselves from the sky into the moat, screeching as they fell and were consumed, and on the far side the slinking aliens rose up and rushed forward as one.

  The guns on the curtain wall opened up on the horde. War’s pandemonium was unleashed once more.

  Ordamael received a flurry of data-squirts from various places: the strategium, the Citadel Reclusiam, the company commanders overseeing the section of the curtain wall behind him. The tyranids were attacking at five distinct points. The aerial swarm was hurling itself into the moat across spaces no more than fifty feet wide. The terrestrial creatures approached the same segments.

  ‘They mean to fill the moat with their dead,’ he told the mortals. ‘Teach them the error of their ways!’

  ‘All sections prepare for immediate armoured support,’ voxed a voice he did not know. A datatag signified it as coming from the strategium. ‘Stand by for heavy artillery bombardment.’

  The tyranids were wily. Broods of lesser ’gaunts raced up and down the bank, drawing much of the fire of the human conscripts.

  ‘Concentrate fire on the crossing point!’ Ordamael bellowed over the whistle of shells and explosions that obliterated thousands of creatures on the far side. An incandescent stream of plasma turned night into day, charring the falling aerial creatures into carbon at the edges of its track, evaporating them completely at the heart. The humans cried out as their unprotected eyes were damaged. Ordamael’s sensorium pinged out warning notes. His eye-lenses darkened to compensate. When the stream cut out and his lenses cleared, he was blinking away after-images.

  Still the creatures came. The aerial swarm was so thick that it fell in an almost solid torrent, obscuring the creatures charging into the water from the far side. As during the day, thousands of tyranids died. Heavy weapons cut the dropping creatures to pieces. Titan-killers punched massive holes in the swarm. It was to no avail. Slowly but surely, the moat was filling with corpses. The bones of tyranid dead rose to the surface as more and more creatures poured themselves into the moat. Even as the bone causeway broke the surface of the hungry water, they continued to die; a splash from the moat was a death sentence. Con
vulsing ’gaunts spilled from the sides of the causeway, widening it. It rose higher from the water, until its snout was proud of the killing liquid. The ’gaunts poured on, those strains armed with ranged weapons not even bothering to discharge them as they threw themselves to their death.

  The rain of aerial creatures continued. A huge splash exploded upward as a larger flying beast crashed into the water right on the edge of the extending rampart. It took its time in dying, thrashing about and spraying deadly liquid all over the creatures rushing to use it as a bridge. Hundreds more fell to the concentrated fire of the Space Marines. Their deaths were of no account, only their mass was. Whether its minions fell whole or in pieces into the moat was irrelevant to the hive mind, so long as they fell.

  ‘Keep firing!’ shouted Ordamael. ‘We stand in the eye of the storm! The Emperor is immobile upon his Golden Throne, he relies on you for victory! Your strength, your will! Do not disappoint him.’

  His words were drowned out by the terrible racket of the swarm. Being close to so many of them affected the mind. His thoughts were filled with nameless dread.

  Ordamael was not one to be frightened. He pushed aside the artificial fear contemptuously, held up his gun and strode forward beyond the defence line, sending bolts winging their way into the horde. Seeing the angel of death stand unharmed before the fury of the enemy heartened the mortal troops, and their fire rate increased. They could not miss. Every las-beam felled an alien. It did not matter.

  The lead edge of the causeway approached the Imperial side with increasing speed, the aliens building upon the now firm foundations of their own dead. Screeching hormagaunts sprang forward from the advancing lip. Several floundered in the water close to the edge, long claws stabbing into the bank to haul themselves out as they were devoured alive.

  The next group would make the jump.

  ‘Concentrate upon the lead elements!’ Ordamael shouted. Support fire from the curtain wall switched targets, homing in on the causeways themselves. The bone bridges were hit several times, but every crater was ­rapidly filled, and the causeways grew wider, pushing out the thirstwater. Free of its rockcrete channel and sated with the moisture of a million alien dead, it seeped away into the sand.