The Devastation of Baal

by Guy Haley

  ‘You knew yourself, or you would not have followed me.’

  Appollus laughed harshly. ‘You who were going to save the Chapter, killing us all for a Blood Angel’s whim! The irony chokes me.’

  Seth rounded on Appollus. ‘Do not speak to me this way, Chaplain.’

  ‘I perform the duties of my office.’

  ‘You speak from your black hearts.’

  Appollus stepped threateningly close. ‘If you do not like what I say, then confer with High Chaplain Canarvon instead.’

  Appollus jested bleakly. Canarvon had finally succumbed to his centuries-long sorrow the day before, and the same day perished in the black of the Death Company.

  ‘You are not an authority over me,’ growled Seth. ‘I am Chapter Master. My decision stands. We fight here. We sally out when needed. We kill at the right time. I have not returned this Chapter from the brink of destruction to throw it away.’

  ‘We will die,’ said Appollus, ‘and for the benefit of one who would have executed you, had High Chaplain Astorath not exerted his will.’ Appollus slammed his hand down hard on the rampart. ‘What is this? The old Seth would never have grovelled before Dante. You put the Angels of Baal before your own brothers. You left our scouts to die to help Dante at Cryptus. Dozens of us fell at that shield world so that the rest of us might die here. There are less than two hundred of us left, Seth. Amit’s legacy has long been guttering. You will be the one to snuff it out.’

  ‘Only cowards speak so. Cowards have no right to audience,’ said Seth. He stepped away. Appollus’ hand shot out and grabbed his arm.

  ‘I am all you have left.’ Anger simmered under his words. Seth respected the strength of will the Chaplain possessed to keep himself in check. ‘The rest of the Reclusiam are dead. I am the last of the Flesh Tearers Chaplains, and I speak to you rightly.’

  Seth’s breath whistled through clenched teeth. He forced the tension from his muscles. Appollus released his arm.

  ‘We should not die like cornered vermin.’ A plea, fuelled by anger and pride. ‘I am an Angel of the Emperor. We should die with Sanguinius’ name on our lips and our weapons in our hands, not skulking behind these walls. The paltry defences set in place on this moon are nothing.’ Appollus flung out his other hand to encompass the horizon. It shook with anger. ‘The other Chapters are destroyed. The real battle is on Baal. Dante did you a great dishonour, and he did not ask you as an equal. He ordered, you obeyed.’

  ‘There is no dishonour in what we do,’ said Seth. He wanted to agree with the Chaplain. His soul ached to plunge into the fire and never emerge. But he could not. He was Chapter Master, Guardian of Wrath, and he would use it, not it him. ‘Dante has tasked me with safeguarding the last feather of our primarch. There is no greater ­honour than that. We can go out as you say, full of righteous fury, and slaughter the enemy until we fall. But we will fall quickly. By remaining here, we buy the Blood Angels time. We divert the attention of the hive mind and we ensure, Chaplain, that at least a portion of this bloodline you say you care for so much survives.’

  ‘We will perish needlessly. The Flesh Tearers will be no more.’

  ‘This is no longer about our survival or damnation. This is about the survival of the heritage of Sanguinius!’ Seth shouted right into Appollus’ helmeted face. The skull remained impassive.

  Seth turned away, teeth grinding. He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, letting the chill of ceramite on skin cool some of his rage.

  Appollus made a noise of utter contempt. ‘Dante has changed you for the worse, Seth. Dante sees you as a savage. He uses you as a tool. And you are. I look to Sentor Jool and see the old Seth. He does not hold back. He will die gloriously. We will die like dogs for the benefit of Commander Dante, no one else.’

  Appollus stormed away, his ink black armour swallowed up by the night.

  Seth spat out over the rampart and looked over the plain to where the Knights of Blood fought. Jool had ignored Seth’s wishes and established his operations close by the Flesh Tearers’ position. By all rights they should have been wiped out three times over. Jool had done exactly what Seth would not, plunging his forces directly into the heart of the enemy. Flashes of boltgun fire and vox-amplified howling were the sole indications they survived amid the churning mass of aliens.

  He respected and loathed the Knights of Blood. They fought with the strength of ten men each, and reaped a terrible toll on the enemy. They did not fear the rage and the thirst as too many of his cousin Chapters did. But tyranid blood was not their sole tally on Baal Primus. The numbers of mortals had dwindled fastest near the position of the Knights of Blood. Very few of them had been killed by the enemy.

  Seth was glad it would all be over soon. In the Knights of Blood he saw his Chapter’s future, as rage-fuelled animals who fought without restraint. That future had shortened considerably, but damnation still had time to claim them. While he drew breath, the Flesh Tearers would attempt to be of some service.

  Baal was coming up, bathing the hordes of tyranids in the badlands in pink planetshine. The mother world rose quickly. Seth watched it until the equator rolled over the horizon and the Arx Angelicum became visible.

  He looked to the location of the fortress monastery through void war discharge and swarms of tyranid ships. Occasional flashes of light on the surface, far away, indicated that the Blood Angels still held out.

  Transfixed by the lights, Seth punched at the rampart with his left fist, landing blows in time with the guns that got heavier the more he thought.

  Appollus was right, but Seth knew he was also right. There must be a middle way.

  Alarms blared, breaking his concentration. Searchlights snapped on, bringing a wide section of the badlands into brilliant illumination. Hundreds of massive assault beasts were moving forward. Gunfire from the two forts was immediately redirected upon them, but though the ground shook and buckled under the bombardment, the creatures’ armour was thick, and precious few of them fell.

  Seth heard their support broods before he saw them, a chittering, chirring screeching, a darker blackness on the night, and a torrent of bodies with beating wings flashed in the searchlight beams.

  Seth grinned with feral glee. It appeared his choice of death was to be dictated for him. The tyranids were making another assault.

  Appollus got his wish, though not for the reasons he had put forward.

  Seth led half of his warriors in a charge into the tyranids in an attempt to reach Sentor Jool, pre-empting the attack upon his forts. His men joyously abandoned their guns and took up chainswords and bolt pistols, rushing after their master into the fray.

  Darkness made no difference to Seth. He killed in the light and he killed in the dark with equal efficiency. The night was the same as the day had been, save only that now upon his back, secured in a magnetic tube locked to his armour, was the reliquary of Amit and its precious cargo.

  He let the Red Thirst slip free of all bonds. His teeth extended, digging into his lower gums. He salivated for blood, even for the vile ichors of the tyranids. He would kill them all and then he would sate the lesser of Sanguinius’ curses. That was his pledge to himself.

  ‘By the Blood am I made strong!’ he roared, gutting a genestealer. Its fellows ran at him, deadly claws extended. If a single one got within striking distance he was as good as dead. Seth laughed. None of them got close. He cleaved them in two. Bolt rounds from his honour guard punched them from their feet. His warriors ran beside him in a shallow spear tip, howling and roaring as they smote the foe. The last of his Death Company gave out strangled cries as they bludgeoned their opponents to death. His battle-brothers barely had any more restraint. Harahel, First Company champion, was a snarling dervish. Belthiel the Librarian wielded his anger as a psychic bludgeon, smashing aside the enemy in wide swathes. Flesh Tearers Dreadnoughts stamped through the mass of tyranids, waist deep in
lesser beings. Lightning claws spinning, they engaged the monstrous beasts of the enemy, coring deep, bloody holes in their chitinous armour. Stuttering light cast by the disruption fields of power weapons strobed the battlefield. Searing plasma blasts brought short noons to the dead of night.

  ‘We are wrath! We are fury!’ the Flesh Tearers chanted. ‘We are the blade of the angel, we are the death of the alien!’

  Screaming, killing, the Flesh Tearers ripped through the phalanx of heavy assault creatures moving towards the forts. A few guns still fired up there. They were inconsequential. Fury carried them forward. Krak grenades jammed into bony hollows and breathing vents brought carnifexes low. Volleyed plasma pistol shots immolated trygons. To Seth’s left his men closed on a tervigon, riddling its birthing sac with bolt shells. Termagaunts flopped out, half alive, from the ruin of the alien womb, slain before they assumed full awareness. A dozen chainswords dipped in and out of the tervigon’s exposed guts, bringing the mighty creature to death.

  The tyranids had adapted themselves for the Blood Angels’ propensity for violence. They had learned at an exponential rate all the weaknesses of their enemy, but their knowledge was generalised. They were not prepared for this charge. They were not prepared for the Flesh Tearers. The tyranids lumbered about, becoming entangled, attempting to make space for their weaponry, but the closely packed nature of the horde prevented them. They fired anyway, sending frenzied grubs, hypertrophic seed pods and acid sprays at Seth’s men, hitting their own kind instead. The organisms that made the tyranids’ munitions were programmed not to harm recognised phenotypes, but acids and pyrochemical mixtures knew nothing, and burned tyranids as easily as men.

  Flaring chemical fire bathed the battleground in weird colours. Bone-dry soil turned into slurry with the spilling of so much xenos vitae.

  Blood pounded in Seth’s skull to the rhythm of two hearts. ‘By his Blood are we made! By his Blood are we armoured! By his Blood shall we triumph! Forward, forward! To the Knights of Blood!’

  Another monster died, and another. The noise of boltguns and more chanting came from a shock ridge ahead.

  ‘Sentor Jool!’ roared Seth. ‘Sentor Jool! I have come for you!’ With a surge of near ecstatic exhilaration, Seth ran at a massive carnifex, lopping off the snout barrel of its bonded cannon. The thing was powerful but slow, almost pecking at Seth with its crustacean’s claws. Seth was too fast. Two well-placed blows with his sword blinded the monster, and he ran up its shoulder, rode its frenzied bucking until he stood athwart its spine. Reversing Blood Reaver, he rammed it downward, struggling as the weapon skidded on the beast’s living shell. He fought with the eviscerator until it snagged on an edge of chitin and pulled forward, burrowing itself down into the beast’s back. The carnifex crashed forward, dead, and Seth leapt free.

  Figures in silver and red appeared, intermingled with the aliens. Some moved to attack him. He parried the blows of one, shoving him back so that he disappeared into the press of the melee. He was forced to kill another. On he went, slaughtering everything in his path, until a ragged banner came into view, and a giant figure stood upon the ridge’s edge.

  ‘Sentor Jool!’ Seth called. He barged past a Knight of Blood, knocking the weapon from another’s hand.

  Jool roared and jumped down the slope, feet slamming into the ground before Seth. He swung his chainsword. Seth caught its edge upon Blood Reaver. The motors of their weapons whined as teeth tracks jammed against one another.

  ‘Sentor Jool!’ said Seth. He threw back the other Chapter Master. ‘Dampen your fury!’

  The Knight of Blood recovered and raised his weapon to strike again. Seth shouted back.

  Jool halted, and lowered his sword. From head to foot he dripped with alien fluids. Rents in his armour fizzed with sealant foams. A sundered power cable sparked.

  ‘You deign to share the field with us, after all,’ said Jool. His voice strained with the effort of not leaping forward to attack Seth.

  The fighting was abating around them. Knights of Blood formed a circle around the two Chapter Masters. Flesh Tearers matched their counterparts, all of them constantly in motion.

  Seth reached up and tore his helm free. He had not realised in his fury that it was raining a salty, acidic ­drizzle. He blinked the stinging liquid away from his eyes.

  ‘The tyranids are feasting. This world is lost,’ said Gabriel Seth. He too felt the urge to fight, to attack and kill the Knight of Blood, to cast aside all reason and end his life with one final, heroic duel. He kept his passions in check. He had something else in mind. ‘You can fight me, or we can fight them together.’

  Jool growled. ‘I should kill you.’ He took a step forward. ‘The time for alliance is done. There is only blood.’ Jool’s men formed up around him. Seth’s Flesh Tearers responded in kind. Boltguns raised. The rage rose in them all. Fratricide was a heartbeat away.

  Seth gunned Blood Reaver’s engine, and held it, ready for violence.

  ‘I was correct,’ said Jool thickly. ‘You and I are just the same. Such glorious slaughter we could have made, if only you had listened. Now it is too late.’

  ‘It is not!’ Seth roared. With a great effort of will, he threw down Blood Reaver, and tugged the tube from his back, knocking the top off and allowing Amit’s Reliquary to slide out into his hands.

  ‘I will not let the rage take me here,’ said Seth, holding out the reliquary. ‘I will not pointlessly die as a beast.’ At the sight of the reliquary, the anger of the others faltered. ‘I will not fight at the rage’s behest. I fight for Sanguinius. My death will count for something.’

  Jool stared at the reliquary. His head bowed, his weapon wavered and lowered. ‘For the Great Angel,’ he said, his voice quiet. ‘We fight for the Imperium.’

  ‘Not for fury’s sake,’ said Seth. He held the reliquary high. As he did so, a clear light shone from within through the fretwork of the metal. At its touch, their anger bled away, and Flesh Tearers and Knights of Blood fell to their knees in wonder, leaving Jool and Seth standing alone. ‘I made a promise to the Master of the Blood Angels to safeguard this artefact. I intend to keep it,’ said Seth.

  ‘What do you suggest?’ said Jool.

  ‘Baal Primus is finished. I have called in my fleet to evacuate us. I will return this relic to its home in the Basilica Sanguinarum. I will allow you to join us, as you requested. Set aside your ban on fighting alongside others. Return with us to Baal, where we will die with purpose.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Paradise Lost

  Piles of broken wings were heaped high like bizarre leaves from stone trees. The Walk of Angels had become a walk of death, and all its lofty heroes cast down from their plinths.

  Gunfire riddled the podiums of the fallen statues, blasting apart stone brought from faraway worlds to grace the Arx Angelicum. Beauty had made her home there since the dawn of the Imperium, but she was driven out.

  The Arx Angelicum burned. On every level of the towering fortress war raged. The tyranid aerial swarm, free to act once the void shield was down, beat back the defenders from the stepped outer galleries of the Arx Murus. Section by section, guns fell silent, and tyranid ground organisms were brought to bear. Carnifexes battered at the fortress’ gates. Lithe-limbed genestealers climbed mirror-sheened walls. Haruspexes vomited cargoes of smaller beasts onto parapets manned only by corpses in power armour.

  Shortly after the void shield fell, the Dome of Angels shattered. Weakened by acidic drool and weapons effusions, the transparisteel gave out under a bombardment spat out by convulsing weapons-tracts of the ships in orbit. There were too few Space Marines vessels left to prevent this. The war in space mirrored that upon the ground; the united front of the sons of Sanguinius was broken into myriad small actions. Seeing the weakness in cohesion between the Chapters, the hive mind had driven them apart, and was eliminating them one by one.

 
; What reports made it to the strategium through the tyranid denial broadcasts spoke of Chapters shattered and battle-barges destroyed. The Invictrix, flagship of the Charnel Guard, was downed over Baal Secundus, the scattered remains of its hull burned in the Great Salt Wastes of Dante’s birth. The Flesh Tearers Victus had broken flight and had not emerged from the far side of Baal Primus. All told a dozen battle-barges were verified destroyed, ten more were missing, presumed lost. Hundreds of other craft were gone. The entirety of the Golden Sons warfleet, whose auric vessels had patrolled the northern reaches of the galaxy since the 38th millennium, were shattered into gold-rich fragments orbiting Baal’s outer worlds. Their fabled librarius was lost to the void. Their serfs were consumed by the hive mind, their battle-brothers reduced to a handful of scattered survivors. The Angels Excelsis had died in flames. The Scions of Sanguinius were down to a sole battle cruiser limping away from the conflict. So it went on. Mortis mark after mortis mark came in, not the single runes that denoted the loss of a battle-brother, but rare and terrible symbols that spoke of the deaths of companies and of Chapters. The Angels Glorious, the Burning Blood, the Brothers of Jarad, wiped out without a sole survivor. The situation on Baal was little better. And as Dante’s soul shook with each instance of dreadful news, so the Arx Angelicum rocked to the pounding of bio-artillery and ram-beasts hurled to their deaths from high orbit.

  The time for tight cooperation between the Chapters was over, ended far more quickly than Dante had feared possible. The dwindling warriors defending the Arx against the swarms fell back on what they knew; fighting by Chapter, company and squad, until massive casualties rendered even these modest groupings irrelevant, and too often warriors found themselves alone to face the foe and the thirst before the end. Like hive world gangs, bands of survivors carved out territories to defend within the fortress monastery. In the Heavenward Redoubt a semblance of order remained, but outside the keep of the Arx the sons of the Great Angel were forced back corridor by corridor. No matter how many of the enemy they slew, there were always more, and so they were worn down, isolated and ultimately destroyed.