The Devastation of Baal

by Guy Haley

  The jabbering of the servitors grew louder. The awful shriek competed with it in volume.

  Adanicio pulled away cowering serfs from the desk that operated the shutters and overrode the servitors responsible for their operation.

  A bass rumbling cut into the infernal howling. Massive slabs of rock fifty yards thick slipped away from the windows, allowing daylight into the strategium.

  Dante wove unsteadily to the glass. For the first time in centuries, he felt nauseous, sickened to the depths of his soul by whatever was unfolding outside. He slammed into the armourglass, armoured fingers scraping on it as he struggled to remain upright.

  The rock shutters withdrew, leaving Dante staring out of a deep slot onto the outside world.

  The sky was on fire.

  Lightning stabbed down in a frenzy from churning clouds. Tyranid feeding tubes broke and fell. A violent wind swept across the land.

  Unclean energies spread through the sky, engulfing ships in writhing wreaths of hellish light. They burst and fell, burning with green flame. Reality quivered like a struck gong. All across the deserts of Baal, the tyranids stopped, and turned as one to face the heavens, their mouths open as wide as they would go.

  The awful shriek came from a billion alien throats.

  The hive mind was screaming.

  Baal endured a cataclysm unfolding across the entire galaxy.

  Darkness came to Baal as a shock of purple fire. The three worlds were engulfed in a haze of boiling energy that first swallowed the stars then obscured each of the trio from the other. On Baal Secundus, the astropaths of the Blood Angels, sheltered behind the ceramite wall of Carmine Blades, cried out and perished, leaving only a handful alive to experience the full horror of the warp unleashed. Deep in the Ruberica, Mephiston’s coven of psykers reeled. Navigators aboard the embattled ships were blinded by soulfire. Librarians fighting in the Arx dropped convulsing to the ground, their teeth shattering under the force of their spasms.

  Every mind felt the touch of the warp, whether great or small. Being blessed with a portion of their father’s ­psychic might, the scions of Sanguinius were all troubled. Guns dropped from numb hands as visions of wars lost long ago filled their minds, and the rage stirred in the breasts of every one. The Tower of Amareo resounded to frenzied calls for blood and flesh.

  But the sons of the Great Angel were less afflicted than their foe.

  Screaming warp fire crashed against the gestalt soul of the tyranids, catching it unawares. The delicate synaptic web that bound its numberless minds into one being shrivelled like thread in a fire. Never before had the hive mind been so grievously wounded. Its control over its trillions of bodies was violently disrupted. Hive fleet was cleaved from hive fleet, brood from brood so catastrophically that for a moment the hive mind ceased to be. It recovered quickly, diminished but alive, but that moment seemed to the hive mind an eternity of darkness. Trillions of its creatures permanently lost touch with the hive mind, and were reduced to unthinking animals.

  For the first time in its existence, the hive mind tasted death.

  In the Baal system hundreds of thousands of tyranids died, their brain stems reduced to smoking mulch by psychic feedback. Aggressive void predators became drifting hulks in the space of an instant. In the strategium Dante collapsed, unconscious. Thousands of Space Marines of the Blood followed him. Many awoke with no memory of who they were, their scarred minds full of visions of Sanguinius’ death. The end of their own lives in madness and blood beckoned.

  The Cicatrix Maledictum had opened.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A Message

  Master Jerron Leeter glanced behind him before placing his hand upon the activation pad for the astropathicum portal. He feared the sight of his protectors. Not for their savagery, but because they would try to stop him.

  ‘I have been down here plenty of times since the rift,’ he said nervously to himself. ‘I have every right to be here. The Carmine Blades will not remark on me going to my station.’

  The door opened silently. Chilled air blew outward. On the other side of the threshold was a deep quiet; astropaths worked better without distraction.

  Jerron Leeter glanced around a room he had shared with his fellows for a century, but which they had never seen. The numbers of astropaths who retained the faculty of vision was so microscopically small nobody bothered to record it, so far as he knew. He regarded it as a gift from the Emperor. Being able to see did not seem like much of a blessing right then.

  His colleagues remained in the sending cradles where they had died. The Carmine Blades were good protectors, but unsentimental. It was debatable which was worst; the smell of refrigerated meat going bad in the frigid room, or the twisted looks of horror on their sunken faces. Astropath Minoris Daneel in particular looked horrifying. He had screamed so loud his jaw had dislocated.

  Leeter felt guilty. It was he that had insisted that the astropaths be on duty permanently, despite the pain inflicted on them by the tyranids’ presence, in case a message got through. He had hooked them up to stimm-laced nutrient feeds so they could work without rest to pierce the shadow in the warp. For this task they had worked in unity, minds blended. Leeter’s little choir was therefore as vulnerable as it could possibly be when the rift opened and reality screamed. He had been with them. He had felt their souls ripped from their bodies. He had sensed their total extinction.

  Guilt was a weakness. At least, so the priests said. They would say that the astropaths died doing their duty as was expected. It felt like his crime anyway. No matter how he turned the problem about in his head, he could see no way to prevent what had happened. It didn’t help.

  He moved carefully, so as not to disturb Horden Gennot, the only other living soul in the astropathicum. It was impossible of course; Gennot’s ears were as sharp as a blood eagle’s, but he had to try.

  ‘Master?’ Gennot spoke in a whisper. Of the seven astropaths in the relay, Leeter, Gennot and Anama Tuk had survived the opening of the Great Rift. Anama Tuk was driven insane, and Leeter had strangled her three days after the skies began to bleed, fearful that her untethered mind might pave the way for daemonic intrusion.

  Gennot had fared better. He at least lived, and was sane, though the shock of the warp storm had wounded some fundamental part of his body, and he was too weak to be removed from his cradle. Leeter alone had come through unscathed.

  Relatively. His mind’s eye harboured painful after-images that nibbled at his sanity. Bits of his soul were sore, others were fragile, some felt like they were no longer his, but had come from somewhere else. If he were truthful, he did not think he could trust himself completely any more.

  He ignored Gennot, going to his sending cradle to prepare it for his work. He set up sensor pads he would press against his shaven head, he cleaned the neural shunts and feeding tubes that plugged into the sockets in his arms.

  ‘Master? What are you doing?’ said Gennot.

  ‘I have come to tidy a little,’ Leeter lied. ‘My strength has returned. My cradle is a mess, and it is time to remove these bodies. I thought this small work was a good place to start. It will calm my spirit.’

  Gennot cocked his head. The spare light of the astro­pathicum caught on the metal orbs filling his eye sockets – richly worked gifts of gold from the Blood Angels. ‘Then why are you alone? Where are your attendants?’

  Leeter continued working. ‘Sleeping,’ he lied.

  ‘Your tone betrays you, Astropath Prime,’ said Gennot. His injuries made him bold. Before the rift, he would never have spoken to Leeter that way. Leeter supposed he had nothing to lose now. ‘You are going to attempt to penetrate the veil.’

  Leeter sucked air through his teeth. He paused in his preparations. As soon as he flicked the toggles to bring the psy-amplifiers online, the game would be up. He realised then he was lying for his own benefit, putting of
f the truth of what he was to attempt, not to spare Gennot, but because he was terrified.

  ‘You are as perceptive as ever,’ he said, bowing his head. ‘I am going to. I have to try. Can you feel it? The shadow in the warp has lifted for a while. This is our chance to call for help.’

  ‘I heard the enemy scream,’ said Gennot with a shudder. ‘I never want to hear anything like that again.’

  ‘Well,’ said Leeter. He sighed, and was aghast at the tremble of fear that shook him. ‘The hive mind is wounded, but I feel it coalescing in the immaterium. If we are going to call for aid, it must be done now.’

  ‘The risks of a sending during a warp storm are astronomical,’ said Gennot wearily. ‘There has not been a storm of this magnitude ever, as far as I know. You will die. You may kill us all in the process.’

  ‘I am aware of the risks.’ Leeter laughed a little hysterically. ‘What was merely impossible before has become incredibly dangerous instead.’ He punched up the psy-amplifiers. The dull voice of the machine’s spirit reported its readiness. The whine of machines built, passing beyond hearing into a realm only psykers like Leeter and Gennot could sense. Servants usually did all this. His fellow astropaths would find it impossible. Being able to observe their servants at work gave Leeter a much broader understanding of how the astropathicum functioned than most astropaths possessed.

  He checked over the machinery. It was working at optimal capacity. Thank the Emperor the relay’s geothermal plant was still online.

  Before he climbed into his own couch, he activated the psy-dampers on Gennot’s station. There was no need to subject Gennot to what Leeter would experience.

  ‘Master Leeter, don’t do that. I should help you.’ Gennot managed to struggle up onto his elbow.

  ‘You are improving,’ said Leeter. He plugged the various shunts and spikes into his interface ports with unhurried efficiency. ‘I am glad.’ His limbs tingled with the urge to rush, to get it over and done with. He made himself take his time. ‘But you are still weak.’

  ‘I can help. Deactivate the damper. Let me boost your sending.’

  ‘No,’ said Leeter. He pushed the last spike home into the socket at the base of his skull. All this extra machinery was necessary to overcome the baleful influence of the Red Scar. It had always been onerous to use; now he hoped the relay’s booster array would increase his chances of getting a message out.

  To get a message out. Not to survive. He did not expect to live through the next ten minutes.

  ‘The Blood Angels will need at least one living astropath,’ he said, as calmly as he could. ‘Goodbye, Gennot.’

  He flicked on the null sound field, shutting out Gennot’s voice, and eased himself into the sending trance.

  Leeter was skilled. Unreality opened gladly to him.

  Hell awaited him. The warp had gone from unnatural calm under the influence of the shadow to a raging tempest. The hive mind skulked, wounded, at the edge of his perception, the shadow it cast in the warp blasted into raggedness by a boiling seethe of soul-killing energy. Whirling eddies dragged at his soul. Things prodded at the skin of purity the Emperor’s protection afforded him. It was rare to see the truth of the warp so clearly, the things that lived in it, the horror it held – so rare most astropaths below Leeter’s grade could safely be kept in ignorance of the warp’s true nature. But he knew.

  Looking at the state of the immaterium, he doubted that the nature of the warp would remain secret for long. It would be impossible to conceal any longer.

  It hurt to be in there. Agony that he could not describe in human terms pulled at him, teasing apart the fibres of his being. A roaring red pillar of rage battered at him, spatially close, he thought, though the geography of the immaterium made location and distance in the material realm impossible to judge accurately. There was no coherency to anything, all was in flux, and, most troubling of all, the brilliant, soul-searing light of the Astronomican was nowhere to be seen.

  Has Terra fallen? he wondered, his fear growing. Is the Emperor dead?

  The message he had carefully formulated would not take shape in his mind. He could not send it forth. Every attempt to make solid the metaphors he held in his imagination failed. His visualisations melted before they were born, or went bad, becoming abominations that mocked him before dissolving into the sea of souls.

  If he could not send, then he must receive. His heart sank. This was it. Exposing his mind to receive messages would kill him.

  Master Leeter had never neglected his duty.

  With a brief prayer to the Emperor, Jerron Leeter opened his mind to the immaterium. He only hoped there was something to hear.

  Evil voices screamed out their hunger for human souls. Death screams of worlds rippled the fabric of reality. The cries of the damned haunted breathless winds. Things caught sight of the candle of his soul, and swam towards him.

  The fragments of a million frantic sendings skated over his perception, blasted into incomprehensible pieces by the warp storm and the wild temporal disruption it engendered, so that only the fear that propelled them was apparent.

  Something was coming for him. He felt it follow the trail of his being in the warp, sniffing at his essence. He did not have long. He concentrated harder.

  There was a purer presence moving out there, a holy presence, perhaps a focused major choir of his own kind.

  The thing was nearing. He should pull out, but he had to see.

  There was a light, lesser than the Astronomican, but of the same purity, singing the same message over and over again.

  With growing wonder, Jerron processed the message, decoding in-warp as he received it. Relief flooded him, and joy.

  He sent a simple reply, blasted from his being with all the force of his soul, a simple composition, two word signs and the badge of the Chapter, infused with great urgency.

  Save Baal.+

  And then the thing had him.

  Hajjin had been fifth sergeant of the Second Company of the Carmine Blades for a long time. Among his peers he was a warrior of renown. He had skinned his first man long before the Death Games. He had fought on Haldroth at his father’s side against men and beasts both before the coming of the Angels and his ascension to their heaven. Once his body had been changed and his loyalties switched from tribe to Emperor, he had proved himself a dozen times over. When finally his carapace had been awarded in the Flaying Rite, he had not cried out at the priest’s knife, and thereafter he had demonstrated his worthiness to wear the warsuit within days.

  He had lived four hundred years. He had known the Carmine Blades by the name of the Swords of Haldroth. He had been there the day the Redeemer of the Lost had come and changed their Chapter forevermore, and that earned him as much awe as mistrust. Hajjin’s skill with a blade was second to none; his brothers looked up to him, his commanders respected him, his enemies feared him. Yet he had never expected to become Chapter Master.

  Now he was.

  It was an office with a short tenure.

  There were one hundred and fifty-seven Carmine Blades left alive upon Baal Secundus. Eight hundred of them had come to answer the call of Commander Dante. There had been much debating in the House of Long Bones as to whether to answer at all. Hajjin had said no, stating their loyalties to the Blood Angels were too new, but his was a belligerent Chapter. Young blood outnumbered old blood, and the young blood did not remember the time before. Votes had been cast in favour of intervention. Firstblood Kaan, their Master, had been bound by the will of his brothers.

  Nearly all of the Carmine Blades had come to Baal.

  And now Hajjin was Firstblood, first among equals, but lord nonetheless. His was a small kingdom that grew smaller every day.

  ‘I apologise, bringer of dreams,’ he said, giving the old name, the one they had used before they had known it was Sanguinius who brought them their visions, and not the w
ild gods of Haldroth, ‘that I do not feel the honour in my office that I should.’ He finished his prayer, and returned to his vigil over the blasted land.

  The astropathic relay of the Blood Angels hid itself at the top of the world. Baal Secundus had no axial tilt, its seasons instead driven by the complicated series of eclipses imposed upon it by its brother and sister. At the pole, where the relay was located, neither day nor night ruled. A perpetual gloaming had the region under its spell. This was the kingdom of shadows.

  The mountains the relay occupied were small in height and extent, a geological afterthought of cracked brown rock. Arid boulder fields spread around the mountain’s feet. Dirty ice streaked with sand skulked in the lee of large outcrops so the wind could not strip it away. It was a rough land grown recently rougher, for new, angular shapes had joined the eroded stones: the corpses of hundreds of thousands of tyranids.

  Forty-nine times the tyranids had thrown themselves at the astropathic relay. Forty-nine times the Carmine Blades had repelled them. The base of its walls were choked with the dead. The rough camp of refugee mortals who had come begging for shelter was a pounded area of fabric ­tatters and metal scrap to the east. Spent ammunition casings were heaped high around the relay’s autocannon turrets.

  Each assault had cost the Carmine Blades more of their brothers. Their ammunition dwindled, their officers were felled, their heroes slaughtered. The Carmine Blades did not falter in their duty. They understood the sky-talkers must live.

  Forty-nine times. Until the void had opened up, exposing its guts, and the creatures had stopped coming.

  Hajjin watched. There was no movement on the ground. There had been none for many days.

  ‘Firstblood.’ Sergeant Konoko saluted his leader, right fist clanging on his left shoulder. ‘All is quiet in the south. The chimneys no longer belch their smoke. I see no ships in the void.’