The Devastation of Baal

by Guy Haley

  ‘Come on, Luis,’ said his father. ‘Not far now.’

  ‘Da?’ said Dante. ‘Da, is that you? Look at me, look! I became an angel, Da.’

  ‘My lord?’

  His father’s face shivered away like a mirage over a desert. Albinus’ concerned face replaced it. ‘My lord, we should stop. You are gravely wounded. Please allow us to help you. Let us carry you.’

  ‘Give him aid,’ said Karlaen impatiently.

  ‘No!’ commanded Dante. ‘I will walk. No help. Not yet. I must walk.’

  That he did so for penance he did not say.

  They took him to a landing zone where fortifications were springing from the sand. Ships screamed down from the sky, depositing wall sections near heavy haulers. Bunkers dropped from orbit came to a stop on screaming jets over their sites, positioning themselves carefully before shutting off their rockets and slamming into place.

  Thousands of the new Space Marines were there. This was not a Chapter or multiple Chapters, these were the Legions of old, reborn in new ceramite.

  Dante staggered against Albinus. Hands grabbed at him.

  ‘You need to rest, my lord,’ said Albinus again.

  ‘I will not,’ slurred Dante. ‘Not until I have seen this miracle for myself.’

  Wide roads were marked out by barrack blocks. There were thousands upon thousands of men of every kind in the camp. The camp was organised superlatively well, not a prefabricated building out of place, and it was growing rapidly.

  The centre remained the centre, no matter how wide the perimeter grew. There was a campaign castellum undergoing the final stages of assembly. From its four corners fluttered large flags of cobalt blue, the ultima of Ultramar emblazoned on them in silver thread, its arms embracing the aquila of the Imperium, and crowned with a laurel wreath. A familiar insignia with a new twist.

  Wonder built upon wonder; standing guard at the top of the stairs leading to the gates were the gold-armoured warriors of the Adeptus Custodes, whom long-lived Dante himself had seen only within the precincts of the Imperial Palace upon Terra. They saluted the approaching party of Blood Angels.

  The gates whisked open with sharp pneumatic sighs, revealing more honour guard, these Ultramarines veterans.

  A warrior in the battleplate of a captain stepped forward.

  ‘I welcome you to the castellum, Lord Commander Dante,’ he said. ‘Our lord is waiting for you.’

  ‘Sicarius?’ said Dante. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘It is, my lord. It is good to see you alive,’ the Ultramarine said. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Of course he’s damned well hurt, Sicarius,’ snapped Albinus. ‘Take us to him, before the commander collapses!’

  Sicarius held out his hand apologetically, indicating the way Dante should go.

  Ultramarines of the old type gave way to tall examples of the new kind. They stamped their feet and stood to attention as Dante wearily limped towards the central command node’s armoured gates. These opened at his approach. Dante shook off Albinus’ arm at the threshold and stepped through as proudly as he could.

  Upon a throne of pure adamantium, surrounded by hundreds of pristine standards, sat a living miracle, a giant warrior clad in blue and gold, his expression fair yet stern, a massive gauntlet upon one hand, a huge, scabbarded sword resting upon his knee.

  Now he understood the significance of the sword missing from his vision. The sword of the Emperor was there before him, upon the person of a living primarch.

  Roboute Guilliman had come to Baal. There was no mistaking it. Dante had seen the primarch before, shut away in a stasis field in the Fortress of Hera on Macragge, where he had sat a second from death for most of the Imperium’s history. But here he was, alive and breathing.

  The primarch’s physical presence hit Dante hard. Guilliman was nobility writ large, a monument in flesh. He was overwhelming. Ignoring the hurts of his healing wounds, Dante fell to his knees with a clatter and dropped his head.

  ‘Can it really be true? Is it really you? Do you live?’

  The primarch stood and set his sword aside, and came down the steps.

  ‘Get up, Dante,’ said Guilliman gently. ‘I will not accept displays of humility from a man like you. You are one of the few in this era who have earned the right to speak with me on equal terms. Rise. Now.’

  Dante grunted with pain as he attempted to get to his feet. Guilliman grasped Dante’s pauldrons and bodily hauled the Chapter Master up.

  ‘Forgive the indignity,’ Guilliman said. ‘I see you are hurt.’

  Dante nodded numbly.

  ‘Never kneel before me again. I will have you stand with me as a mark of respect. I will order you not to if I must. I would rather our relationship not function on those terms. I have no time for deference, there is too much to do. Though, if your pains are great, you may of course sit,’ he said with the ghost of a smile.

  ‘Is this a dream or a vision?’

  ‘Neither. I live. I have returned to save the Imperium,’ said Guilliman.

  ‘Forgive me, my lord.’ Dante had to step back to look him in the eye. ‘I failed. I called together all the Chapters of the Blood, and lost them all to save Baal. The Arx Angelicum is in ruins. Thousands of Space Marines are dead, and Baal is devastated.’

  ‘Forgive?’ said Guilliman. ‘There is nothing to forgive, Dante. You stopped them. When we arrived, the hive fleet was greatly depleted, and easily destroyed. As we speak, the Indomitus Crusade is scouring this system of the last remnants of the tyranids. You have achieved what few others have, and destroyed a major hive fleet tendril. I would congratulate you, but there is nothing I can say that encompasses the scale of what you have achieved.’ Guilliman put a hand on Dante’s shoulder. ‘You have saved Baal from the hive mind, Commander Dante, and with it the greater part of this segmentum.’

  At that, Dante wept freely.

  ‘I am sorry, I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I almost lost. I almost lost everything. Please forgive me.’

  ‘There is nothing to forgive.’

  Dante did not hear. Overwhelmed by his hurts and the luminous presence of a living primarch, he collapsed to the ground.

  Chapter Thirty

  New Blood

  Uigui shivered. It was a hot day, even in the shelter of the ruined Arx, but he was freezing cold.

  ‘Colder than a desert night in here,’ he said, his teeth chattering.

  ‘D-d-d-da?’ said the boy, his simple face childlike with worry.

  Even so close to death, Uigui was affronted by the boy’s stammer.

  ‘Stop your fussing. I will be fine.’

  What he wanted to do was reassure his boy, to tell him that they had stood on the very heights of the Arx Murus and watched the Space Marines run to their death, that they had fired the great cannons to cover the Angels of Baal as they fought their final fight. That they had witnessed a living primarch, to share their awe at these events as father and son. But resentment and disappointment, and not a little fear, got in the way.

  A flying thing had shot him. Were it not for the boy pushing him out of the way, he would be dead. He wanted to thank his son for that as well, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Every positive thought was a sole warrior arrayed against an army of bitter memories.

  ‘Da?’

  ‘I will be well,’ he said crossly, and turned his face from the boy.

  They waited for hours in the wrecked gallery along with hundreds of other mortal men. Uigui had no time before to think about the fortress monastery, terror had got in the way. Now peace had returned he saw how fine the fitments of the place were, even in that simple corridor, war-battered as it was. Such luxury. It did not seem fair that the protectors should live so well when the protected wallowed in poverty.

  The approach of an angel in white distracted him before his thoughts
could turn truly heretical.

  The angel’s armour gleamed as if no war had been fought there. His insignia was pristine. He moved among the battered conscripts with exaggerated care, as if he feared to step on them. Baseline human attendants in equally spotless uniforms assisted him.

  ‘Hey! Hey!’ called Uigui.

  The angel ignored him.

  ‘Wait your turn,’ one of the human assistants said.

  ‘Yeah, shut up,’ said the man sitting slumped next to him.

  Uigui’s teeth clenched at a sudden agony from his wound. ‘I am hurt!’ he snapped.

  ‘Many are hurt,’ said the angel without looking up.

  Uigui sank back against the wall, shivering with a poison fever. He dozed a little, for when he looked up again the angel was towering over him.

  ‘Now it is your turn,’ said the angel. He knelt beside Uigui. Ridiculously, he reminded the water seller of his father.

  As the angel inspected his wound, so efficiently Uigui suspected him of being perfunctory, Uigui saw the younger conscripts being led away.

  ‘What are you doing with the boys?’ Uigui yelped when the angel prodded his wound.

  The angel stopped. ‘We honour them,’ he said. ‘I have orders to assess them all.’ He looked over at the boy. ‘Is he your son?’

  Uigui gritted his teeth. It was hard to admit he was the boy’s father, even now. ‘Yes. Yes, he is my son.’

  ‘Is he hurt?’

  ‘No! I am the one who is hurt!’ said Uigui. The pain was getting to him. Something was moving in the meat of his chest, he was sure of it. He was scared.

  The angel glanced at the boy, who stared back in awe. The angel looked closer. ‘This scarring on his head… How did he come by it?’

  ‘An old wound,’ said Uigui.

  The angel reached out his left arm. A device bulked out the armour. A vicious-looking drill head poked out from a cowl on the underside. On the upper side of his forearm was set a small screen and a number of buttons. They meant nothing to Uigui. The angel depressed a button on his arm and waved his hand over the boy’s head. His fingertips lit up with violet light. The boy blinked fearfully at it.

  ‘My son was selected at the last trial to go to the Place of Challenge two summers ago,’ explained Uigui. ‘He was a brave boy, clever and strong when he went, then you broke him and sent me back this fool.’

  The device hummed. The boy tried to be brave, but his lip quivered, on the edge of tears.

  ‘A fool, really?’ said the angel. ‘He must have fought bravely if he lived through the devastation.’

  Uigui’s lips pressed thin. He almost mentioned how his son had saved his life twice. Almost.

  ‘How did it happen?’ asked the angel. ‘This wound that disqualified him?’

  ‘An accident, so I was told. He slipped on a climb and banged his head.’

  ‘Then he was lucky. There are a hundred ways to die at the Place of Challenge.’

  ‘His survival was a curse.’ A hacking cough afflicted Uigui. When it subsided, his mouth was full of a foul tasting, meaty grit.

  The angel’s instrument made a sweet note, and he dropped his wrist.

  ‘I see,’ the angel said, his voice beautiful and cold. ‘He has minor brain damage. I am not surprised he was rejected. We take so few, any flaw is enough to eliminate them from the process.’

  ‘Would you have taken him had he not fallen?’

  ‘Possibly. His genetics are a match, and free of the more egregious Baalite deviations.’ He paused. ‘He is a positive match for gene-seed integration.’

  ‘So you would have taken him?’ said Uigui bitterly.

  ‘We would, had he proven himself. I would say he has. Let me see.’ The angel paused, looking into an inner space. ‘He has, he had, a fine brain, before his mishap.’ He paused again. ‘The damage is reparable,’ he said. He muttered something that Uigui could not hear, and waited for a response, then turned to the boy. ‘You are accepted. You are to be an angel.’

  The boy’s face lit up.

  ‘What?’ said Uigui. ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘It is unusual, I admit,’ said the angel. ‘But the Chapters of the Blood are shattered. Many are destroyed, most are seriously undermanned. Commander Dante has decreed that all Baalite youths of the right age and genecode are to be immediately inducted as neophytes into one of the Chapters of the Blood. We can repair his mind, and he will serve the Emperor.’

  ‘The youths you are taking away, you are recruiting them?’ said Uigui incredulously.

  ‘If they are compatible, like your son here. If they are not, they will be offered the choice of all aspirants who fail the gene test. They may return home, or they may serve the Chapter as blood thralls. In recognition of their courage in the face of the tyranids, you understand. We pay you a great honour. The Lord Guilliman comes with machines and knowledge to make a better kind of Space Marine. A new era dawns.’

  ‘This hasn’t happened before, has it?’ asked Uigui uncertainly.

  ‘It is unprecedented, citizen.’

  ‘What about me?’ said Uigui. The shivers came on again. There was burning pain in his wound.

  The angel leaned back over him. He seemed even more massive when he did that. The angel reached up a cold, metal hand and touched Uigui’s face.

  ‘I am sorry. You will die. You have been contaminated by a xenos gene-forge bio-organism. It will either kill you, or turn you against us, and then you will die.’

  Uigui’s mouth hung open. ‘I am to die and you tell me like that?’ He was finding it hard to control his temper today.

  ‘All things die,’ said the angel. ‘Nothing lasts forever. All men know this. How else am I supposed to inform you?’

  ‘Look into your damned machine,’ Uigui said. ‘You are wrong. I will be well.’

  The angel sounded genuinely regretful. ‘I do not need to. The signs are clear. I am sorry.’ He looked away a second, then reached swiftly round and gripped the top of Uigui’s head.

  Uigui stared into the glass eye-lenses of the angel. They looked back at him, neither judging nor condemning.

  Uigui looked to his son. ‘An angel, eh?’ He smiled.

  ‘A-a-a-are you proud of me, Da?’ said the boy.

  Uigui nodded. He could think of no words to say to make up for the way he had treated his son. A look of idiot innocence made the boy’s features doughy, but Uigui could see the boy he had been, and the man he might have become. All that grief, all that hate, turned against the one he had loved. Now he had reached the end, he was numb to it all, and so very tired. Most of all, he was dumbfounded it was all over. Death was life’s great expected surprise.

  His boy might still become the man he always hoped for. He might still.

  ‘What is your son’s name?’ asked the angel.

  Uigui screwed up his eyes. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘What is his name?’

  ‘Teus,’ said Uigui. ‘His name is Teus.’

  A dam of sorrow broke in him. Tears welled at the corner of his eyes.

  ‘And what is your name, father of Teus?’

  ‘It is Uigui. I am Uigui, the water seller.’

  ‘Then, Uigui the water seller, do you accept the ­Emperor’s mercy?’ the angel asked in tones of infinite kindness.

  Uigui closed his eyes. The grip of the angel’s hand on his head was cold and firm without being painful.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘I accept. Teus, I am sorry. I am so sorry. I–’

  ‘Da!’

  The angel twisted. The crunch of bone was sudden and final. Uigui’s head lolled on a broken neck.

  The angel stood and spoke to men the boy could not see. ‘Cleansing team to the Galilean Walk. I have a contaminated body.’

  ‘You killed my da!’ said the boy.

 
The angel looked down at the boy. ‘This was mercy, not murder. He would have died in pain, and would have wished for a swifter end before the poison killed him. He was brave and wise, at the end, at least. He took kindness when it was offered over agony.’

  The angel reached out his hand.

  ‘It is misfortune you witnessed his death, but there are many things we never think to see,’ said the angel. ‘What was sundered can again be made whole. Be thankful. We live in an age of wonders. Come with me, be healed, and become my brother.’

  Hesitantly, the boy stood. With a backward glance at his father’s corpse, he allowed the angel’s thralls to lead him away.

  Gabriel Seth returned Amit’s Reliquary in the same manner in which it had been given, in secret and in darkness.

  He waited for Dante in the catacombs far under the Arx Angelicum. Lit by a single red candle, the dusty sarcophagi of forgotten warriors lined shelves carved into the rock. There were thousands of them, in niches that went higher up the wall than he could see, curving away into the absolute darkness of Baal’s underworld. So much artistry was there – every niche carved, every sarcophagus a perfect representation of the unique warrior they contained, all of it hidden forever.

  Pointless, thought Seth, though as he did so he hefted the tube containing the reliquary and doubted his own opinion. There was a permanence in art not found in life.

  The tyranids had not found their way in so deep. The dead slept undisturbed. Perhaps they would have remained there until the sun burned itself out had the xenos won, a relic to be uncovered by the next species arrogant enough to proclaim itself master of the galaxy.