The Devastation of Baal

by Guy Haley

  And yet through it all, the reliquary sat in his arms, a rock of calm in a sea of rage, and Seth drew strength from it, and from him the calm passed to his men.

  It seemed to last forever, as all acute suffering does. When suffering is done it is as if it never was. The human mind cannot remember pain, only the fear of it.

  A Space Marine knows no fear.

  The sickening motion of the craft ceased. It spun out of control, tumbling end over end. The lumens in the transit bay were out. Blackness surrounded him.

  Seth’s breath thundered in his ears.

  Emergency lumens pinked on. Seth’s helmplate crackled and burst back into colourful life. The main lights reactivated a moment later, followed by the cough of misfiring engines. A second of grinding, and they sang true.

  The Thunderhawk levelled out.

  Seth looked upon an awful scene. Several of his men had succumbed to the rage and slain each other. Three of them still ranted at the brothers restraining them. Globules of blood floated about in the microgravity of the transit cabin. At the sight of them, his hands gripped at the reliquary involuntarily.

  ‘My lord, I have… I have…’ The pilot spoke via vox. He sounded confused.

  ‘Tell me the status of the enemy,’ said Seth. ‘Give me a pict feed so that I might see. My armour will not form a databridge.’

  ‘That is it, my lord. They are… They are gone. The enemy are gone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I do not believe it,’ continued the pilot. ‘I cannot believe it.’ Rarely had a wrath-filled Flesh Tearer sounded so confused.

  ‘The storm?’

  ‘Also gone.’

  The co-pilot cut in. ‘There is more, my lord.’

  ‘What?’ said Seth, a sense of cold wonder creeping into his hearts.

  ‘You will not believe me.’

  Seth turned down the mag-lock of his boots so he might walk.

  ‘Then I am coming to see myself.’

  He made his way up the access stairs to the cockpit, still carrying the reliquary. Through the canopy he saw that the storm had vanished from the sky, taking with it the tyranid swarm. Baal writhed with unnatural energies yet, but the stars shone again on the velvet black of space.

  Making its way to Baal with engine stacks burning was the biggest Imperial Fleet Gabriel Seth had ever seen.

  ‘My lord,’ said the Techmarine pilot. ‘We are being hailed.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Fall of Angels

  In the Exis Chapel, Commander Dante paid his respects to Sanguinius one final time.

  In the six days since the Cicatrix Maledictum opened, the Angelic Host had slaughtered the tyranids. For a time, the hive mind appeared to be absent, and the disorganised aliens were easy prey for the Space Marines’ wrath. A series of carefully staged sorties drove the aliens back from the gates of the redoubt, buying the scions of Sanguinius valuable time to regroup within. The Blood Angels held the redoubt still. The rest of the Arx was in the hands of the enemy.

  Now their respite was over. The hive mind stirred once again.

  Ordamael rested his hand gently on Dante’s battered armour. There was not a plate of it untouched. Its lustre was gone, gold worn down to bare ceramite in the few places it was visible beneath scabs of sealant foam and dried alien blood.

  ‘Ordamael,’ said Dante. ‘They are ready?’

  ‘They await your command, my lord,’ said Ordamael. ‘The preparations are made. The Amarean Guard stand ready to open the gates to the tower. I am bound to remind you that once this order is given, it cannot be undone. The blood-cursed will not stop until they are dead. They cannot be contained once released.’

  ‘I will have it done,’ said Dante.

  ‘Then it is time, my lord,’ said Ordamael.

  Dante rose slowly, keeping his head bowed to the modest statue of Sanguinius in the chapel’s reliquary niche. The statue was white alabaster, imported to Baal centuries ago. Light the colour of arterial blood flooding through the windows of the chapel stained the statue a deep, ominous red. The Baalian sky’s subtle shades of pink had been replaced by a bloody effulgence that never changed. The sun was gone. The moons were gone. There was blood in the sky and rage in Dante’s heart.

  ‘Now is indeed the time,’ said Dante. He saluted the statue of his gene-father, and bowed as deeply as his armour would allow. The Exis Chapel was his by right as Chapter Master, his private place for prayer and contemplation. He did not expect to set foot within it again.

  The stairs from the Exis Chapel to the Basilica Sanguinarum resonated to the sounds of Space Marines singing the Moripatris, the death hymn of the Blood, as the last defenders of Baal knelt with heads bowed over their weapons, offering up their lives a final time in the service of their primarch and their Emperor.

  Dante emerged from the stair’s screened door and walked down the central aisle of the basilica. All the warriors were in black now. There was no paint, so the Space Marines had stained their armour as best they could, rubbing blood and soot into the plates to blacken them. The individual colours of Chapters were shrouded in mourning for a bloodline soon to be extinct.

  The cathedral was half ruined. Ornate windows were blown into piles of glass and stone. The roof had partially collapsed. Acid marks pitted the floor where xenos beasts had gained brief ingress before being cut down. The smell of burning was strong everywhere.

  Dante took his place in the pulpit at the head of the basilica for the final time. Chaplains and Sanguinary priests of all the Chapters lined up at the front and turned to face the assembled host, a handful only, fewer than the Blood Angels alone had possessed before the coming of Leviathan. Corbulo lived, as did Ordamael. Many of their comrades had died. They together represented a quarter of the Council of Blood and Bone.

  Dante joined his voice to the singing of the death hymn. The numbers were deceptively high, two thousand, twice as many as a full Chapter, but a fraction of the Angelic Host.

  This defeat was a deadly blow to the scions of Sanguinius, one that they would never recover from, thought Dante.

  Tears coursed down his cheeks. His reign would see the legacy of a primarch destroyed.

  Dante banished his woe as the Moripatris reached its sorrowful end. The roosts of the cyber-constructs who tended the cathedral were empty. No autochoristers remained to leaven the Space Marines’ basso profundo voices with higher registers. Hearing the song that way, from so many transhuman throats and without embellishment lifted Dante’s soul a little. There was a purity there. If the mixed songs of cyborg, Adeptus Astartes and thrall had represented Sanguinius’ blood mixed with that of mortal men, now it was distilled back to its true potency.

  When the last reverberations died away from the cathedral stone and Dante spoke, his voice was strong and clear, free of doubt and despair. All who heard it felt their blood stir.

  ‘There is always beauty, even in the depths of ugliness, even in the depths of defeat,’ said Dante. ‘Your song raises us all above this realm of earthly flesh, for we are angels and warriors in equal part. Our devotion to our Emperor and our gene-father is a paragon to which the citizens of the Imperium have long aspired. Now we stand upon the brink of death, this will not change. I say let us not go into the long silences of history, but stride forward into legend.

  ‘If the tyranids remained without guidance, we might survive here, behind the walls of the Heavenward Redoubt. But they reorganise. The hive mind is disrupted no longer. Our Librarians report the shadow falls once more. It is weak, but it grows stronger with every passing minute, coalescing around one potent nexus. If this is allowed to continue the tyranids will become of one mind again, and they shall attack without mercy, and we will perish here, within these walls. We have no notice of the fleet. The void is awash with the energies of the warp. If we strike down their leader, we may deal the swarm
one fatal deathblow, and save the worlds beyond Baal…’ His voice caught. He recovered quickly. ‘In this way, we will win a victory of sorts. We will most likely die in the attempt. Millions of them remain, scant thousands of us. If we stay behind these walls, they will overwhelm the last of our defences in a few days. This is the only way. The shadow in the warp is a many-headed monster, more ferocious than the hydra of ancient tales, for it has a billion times a billion heads, and all must be severed before it will die. We have the blades! We have the will! Let us carve the skulls of this creature. Are we not the sons of the Great Angel? Are we not the most blessed of all Adeptus Astartes?’

  He let the question hang on the air unanswered.

  ‘Our primarch was among the first to die, but he lives eternal in all our beings. The meat and blood of our bodies are his host. For ten thousand years we have protected his legacy within the fortresses of our bodies.’

  He bowed his head.

  ‘That time is at an end. We are all Death Company now. The sarcophagi lie shattered, their occupants devoured, and our future upon Baal has died with them. The Chapter is finished here, but it is not yet dead. Our bloodline may survive, in the gene-seed of our brothers elsewhere in the galaxy, it may not. This question of survival is no longer ours to contemplate. Divert your gaze from the future, and think of the present, of now, of what we might accomplish in these next, glorious hours. For if we must go into the darkness of extinction, let us do so with our swords in our hands and the wrath of Sanguinius in our grasp. When tidings of this battle reach other worlds, let them lift up their guns and say “We shall not fall! We shall not die meekly. Through battle we remember and honour the sons of Baal!”’

  His voice raised. ‘Who will say “aye”, who will raise his sword with mine? Who will bring burnished steel and wrathful soul to the slaughter, and let red ruin flow? Who will die in remembering our lord? Our flesh may be devoured, but they cannot touch our souls! We are the most blessed of the Emperor’s warriors. The soul of our lord lives in the minds and the hearts of every one of us, we the red clad, the blood hungry. We the wrathful and the pure. We, the sons of Sanguinius, most noble and glorious of all the primarchs, we hold more than his memory in our hearts and minds. The Great Angel would not lurk here waiting for his end. He would strike out, seeking to destroy the leader of his enemies as he did when he confronted his brother Horus.’ His voice lowered. ‘Such a choice is now ours, as it was our father’s. If we do this, we shall all surely perish, but Baal may yet escape, and play host to Space Marines still. You and I will not be among them, but the name of the Blood Angels and the score of other Chapters who fought with us here will yet be known across the galaxy.’

  Dante paused, and reached up behind his head. Seals hissed as he uncoupled the death mask of Sanguinius, exposing his aged face proudly to his brethren.

  ‘For a millennium I have worn this mask, so long that mortal humans on a thousand worlds equate Dante with Sanguinius. One has become the other. I have no need of a mask any longer, I need not wear our lord’s face. He is in here, in my hearts.’ He banged his fist against his chest. ‘I reveal my face to you, long hidden for shame of the weakness age reveals. I shall wear this mask when I fight, in honour of our lord, but I go into the final battle not as a poor facsimile of our father, but as Commander Luis Dante, son of Baal, son of the Great Angel, whose living body is the host of the primarch!’

  He paused. Two thousand black helmets looked back expectantly.

  ‘What say you, warriors of Baal?’ he said in a ferocious whisper that rose in volume and power. ‘That we let slip the Red Thirst one final time, and fly upon wings of wrath with our lord unto battle? I commend you all, oh ye mighty, to the protection of the Great Angel. For the Emperor, for Sanguinius! There is no more beauty to be had from life, so let us then seek a beautiful death!’

  ‘A beautiful death! For the Emperor! For Sanguinius!’ the doomed angels shouted. Their voices shook the ruins of the Basilica Sanguinarum.

  Dante nodded, satisfied. ‘Then we march. All of us who bear the Blood. Chaplain Ordamael, summon the Amarean Guard. Open the gates of the Tower of Amareo. Let the damned march with the damned.’

  The Tower of Amareo had withstood the invasion with its windowless walls intact. Even while the aliens battered at its walls, the battle servitors, Dreadnoughts, Space Marines and blood thralls of the Amarean Guard had not once left their posts, keeping watch on the raging creatures within.

  The gates of red iron opened rarely, and never to let anything out.

  They shuddered. The Amarean Guard’s fifty strong cohort withdrew from the gatehouse to the covered battlements overlooking the way to the tower. With a booming creak, the gates opened wide. As they did so the bell at the pinnacle of the tower was unswaddled. Red and black silk was cast from shutters that had never been opened before, and fell spiralling to the ground.

  The bell began to toll.

  The Custodian of the Damned emerged first, a Space Marine champion oathbound to remain within the tower until the end of days. Now those times had come, and he marched out with his sword flaring with energy, black armour glinting like oil. From behind him came the ­rattling of chains and the grinding of rusted doors forced wide by labouring machines, and howling and screaming of inhuman nature. All the words the thick, animal voices uttered were broken beyond comprehension, save one.

  ‘Blood! Blood! Blood!’

  The damned occupants of the Tower of Amareo burst from the darkness. They were abominations, twisted far from their human origins by rampantly malfunctioning gene-seed. They were twice the size of mortal men, bulging with muscles. Yellowed fangs took the place of human teeth. Their skin was blood red and waxy, their eyes amber. They bounded along on knuckled fists like apes, screaming at the sky. Five dozen immortal monsters whose suffering hung over the Chapter like a poison, free at last to kill.

  They would take no direction. The Custodian of the Damned stood aside and went within an armoured cylinder to let them pass. They sped by raging, beating at their flesh, long black nails ripping at their own skin.

  A way had been cleared from the tower’s gate on the Arx Murus down to the bottom of the redoubt into the Well of Angels. Directed by barred doors and high barricades, the damned hurtled onward. Their roars filled the corridors of the keep, until they came to the grand inner ward, an internal killing field behind the Bloodgate. As the damned approached, portcullis, gates and energy field were all opened. Dead tyranids tumbled down from the corpse piles mounded up against the gates, to join the strata of stinking alien flesh filling the Well of Angels.

  The damned scrambled out over the bodies, scenting things to kill.

  Once they were gone, inner gates at the back of the ward opened, and the Space Marines ran out. By the time they were assembled and ready for their final sally a few minutes later, the screeches of embattled tyranids were already echoing in the hall.

  Dante raised the Axe Mortalis.

  ‘Sons of Baal, forward!’ he shouted.

  ‘For Sanguinius! For the Emperor! A beautiful death!’ they replied, and together they ran though the Heavenward Redoubt’s Bloodgate, and into the occupied Well of Angels.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Advent of the Tyrant

  The Blood Angels stormed through the Well of Angels, smashing aside the tyranids remaining inside as they made for the Elohim Gate. In the tunnel through the mountain wall they found no opposition. The inmates of Amareo’s tower had preceded them, and slaughtered everything in their path.

  The end of the tunnel beckoned, bright and red as a bullet wound.

  As they ran Dante shouted, ‘From his Blood are we born! From his essence are we made! From his passion comes our art! From his nobility comes beauty. From his might stems justice. From his thirst is born righteous rage!’

  For the first time in twelve centuries, Dante let his control slip away, allowi
ng the all-encompassing fury of Sanguinius to push aside his humanity. His worst fear was realised; to let go was pleasurable.

  Dante embraced the Red Thirst. Blood roared in his head bringing pain, but with it came relief. No longer must he hold himself in check. He exulted in his freedom as his muscles swelled and distended. His hearts hammered in his chest like an automatic weapon fired to the point of malfunction. His angel’s teeth extruded themselves from his gums.

  ‘Rage!’ he shouted. ‘Rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light!’

  They burst from the tunnel of the Elohim Gate like the wrath of the Emperor given form.

  The tyranids were sluggish in their response. Their whip-quick reactions had yet to return, though a rippling in the hordes outside the walls suggested a growing coordination.

  The Blood Angels and their successors slammed into the broods of tyranids filling the landing fields, bowling over the smaller types and crushing them underfoot. They followed a wide road of shattered bodies left by the damned, a weakness in the horde the Space Marines were swift to exploit. Jump packs ignited, sending the few warriors who possessed them arcing over their fellows. Dante went at their head, jets thundering. The last of the Sanguinary Guard flew by his side, led by Dontoriel and Sepharan – no matter which Chapter they hailed from, a glorious winged regiment whose like had not been seen since Sanguinius himself flew the skies of Baal. Ordamael flew with Dante, chanting complex poems to Sanguinius that caught and tripped on his thickening tongue, until they became meaningless snarls.

  They descended with a fury born of sorrow.

  Dante’s feet hammered into the skull of a tyranid warrior, smashing it flat. Its lash whip curled up and snared his feet. Dante severed it with a blow of his axe and thumped down onto the bloodied sand, then was off at a sprint. He moved like the desert wind, never still, never faltering, despite residual pain from his many wounds. He ran through the wreckage of Space Marine aircraft and tanks, slaughtering every tyranid he found. A single item pulsed on his helm display: the hive mind nexus detected by his last few pyskers. All other data he had removed. In his furious state he would not have understood them anyway.