by Rob Sanders
At first I considered these flashes of murderous lust to be some manifestation of my existing haunting, that my phantom was to blame. Since I could not consult Chaplain Shadrath over anomalies without crumbling whatever derelict authority I had with the Fifth Company, I reported this new symptom to Ezrachi. I was surprised to find that he too had been experiencing the visions. Further investigation by the Apothecary revealed that we were not the only ones. Without a medical explanation, the haughty Chaplain in turn had to be consulted to provide a spiritual perspective.
The door rumbles aside and Bethesda enters the cell with a bowl. The bowl rattles against the plate upon which it is sitting. If I had been asleep the sound would have woken me. It is Bethesda’s way of announcing her arrival. I sit up and check the time. We are in warp translation. Outside the eddies and currents of the immaterium – a sight never meant for human eyes – ripple and swirl as the Angelica Mortis slows and charges her warp engines, ready to tear her way back into reality. I must confess to an unsettled stomach. I cannot tell whether it is simply the ether-draught of different vessels or the styles of the Navigators piloting them, but this warp jump feels different. I have never had an appetite for warp travel but had just got used to the Scarifica’s smooth passages and the slim frigate’s knife-like dimensional shifts. The strike cruiser, by comparison, is a blunt-nosed beast that bulldozes its way through the currents of the empyrean. The Angelica Mortis’s Navigator – who I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting – goes about his translation like a Land Raider ramming through a blast door. I can feel the vessel below me, smashing through the troughs and prevailing drifts rather than riding them like the Scarifica had done.
There, stood by the opening arch, is my phantom. It has been stood there in the darkness, as has become its unsettling habit, cast in the brilliance of the warp. Its black armour shines with the indescribable spectrum of light and colour flooding the cell. It is almost constantly with me now. Always somewhere, unobtrusive, providing a ghastly background. Whatever it is, it seems to be perpetually on guard, casting me in the role of either prisoner or protectee. I am either being guarded or guarded against. The revenant never speaks but is merely there and ever more so.
The bulkhead opens and my seneschal and lictor enter. They have new robes, as befitting the serfs of an Excoriators corpus-captain. I blink as they file in past the armoured apparition. They seem not to see the thing. This is new. Usually the phantom disappears in the presence of the living. This time it remains for all to see, but for the fact that my serfs seem not to see it at all – the darkness of its armoured form becoming a peripheral blind spot or clouding in the corner of the eye.
Old Enoch mumbles an officious greeting. He is carrying the freshly oiled ‘purge’, ready for my purification. I look to the living and the dead, stunned at how I can be seemingly inbetween. I nod and stand. A moody Oren deposits a bowl of fresh water by my berth and follows his father into my private and adjoining penitorium. Bethesda holds before her the bowl of sourdough bread and Escharan figs. I’m not hungry and give an almost imperceptible shake of the head.
‘You must eat, my lord – to keep up your strength,’ the absterge says. She deposits the plate on the stone of the berth. I go to refute the suggestion but the girl pops a fig into my mouth before I can. She moves to the bowl of water and wrings out a rag. The figs are sweet and more pleasant than I remember. Grumbling, I take another from the plate to settle my warp-churning stomach.
As Bethesda cleanses my flesh in readiness for my purification, Old Enoch and Oren prepare the penitorium for my ‘Donning of Dorn’s Mantle’. Two misshapen servitors enter also, wheeling in the caterpillar-tracked frame upon which my helm and relic armour hangs. My eyes linger on the sheathed blades dangling on their belts from the mount.
After Dorn’s Mantle I don my plate, each piece of ceramite locked and sealed in place by the serfs and servitors. Clearing and reloading my bolt pistol I slip it into my navel holster while Old Enoch and Oren belt my gladii to my hip. The only new addition to the ensemble is Corpus-Captain Thaddeus’s chainsword – a Fifth Company heirloom. A Ryza-pattern rarity, the weapon is relatively short and falchion-shaped, making it perfect for use in areas with restricted space like tunnels and the meat-grinding throngs of battle. The weapon and its harness are strapped to my other thigh.
Oren carries my helm as I make my way through the dormitories, cell blocks and refectory of the strike cruiser. Everywhere I go, unsurprisingly, eyes are averted and heads bowed – a sign of passive defiance easily disguised as subservient acknowledgement. The battle-brothers of the Fifth Company have not forgotten themselves. They are the Adeptus Astartes, proud and bound by centuries of ritual and stricture. I can see through the martial routine and cult observance, however. I see tight jaws and eyes red-rimmed with defeat and loss. They feel the emptiness of the Angelica Mortis and hear the echoes of their butchered brethren. I can hear the snap of the lash with greater regularity than cult observance requires. A company punishing itself beyond the healthy parameters of its primarch’s teachings. Penitoria decks awash with blood. Angels, angry with themselves, furious at me; hollow vessels filling with hate and frustration. I have lived this loathing and there is but one cure. To become honour’s avenger, to right wrongs in the heat of battle; vengeance, surgically applied – the solemn duty for which we were created.
This company is one big open wound. I feel it in the halls and corridors. I feel it across the table of the tactical-oratorium. My officers are gathered here. The great and the good of the Fifth, within whom this pain finds its most intense expression. Again, I have plate, bodies and faces but no eyes. All eyes are on the table. They will not look at me for fear I might know their abhorrence. A hatred born of the shame of my loss both of our precious Stigmartyr and my mind to the Darkness. The same hatred tempered in the fires of their own loss and failure to reclaim the Chapter standard. It is all here, as clear as the Codex Astartes on their faces. The philosopher Guilliman has no advice for me in his great book. Even our own Demetrius Katafalque composed no chapter for this in The Architecture of Agony, although it would have been a worthy subject for his writings.
I sit at the head of a long stone table, a table where the seats are half empty. The absence of the heroes who would have filled those seats has already established a tone. Worse still, I find my phantom has already assumed a dead-man’s seat at the far end of the table. It watches me with a shadowy stillness. The rest of the gathering seem unaware of its macabre presence. I have grown used to the grotesque being and its parlour trickery and attempt to emulate them.
Silence stings the air. Ezrachi is present. The Apothecary is satisfied with his new facilities and Helix-staff, but has found the company’s welcome no warmer than my own. Next to him are the other company specialists: Melmoch, the Fifth’s assigned Librarian and astrotelepathic communications officer – still smiling; Techmarine Dancred with his clockwork face; Chaplain Shadrath, hiding his cold discontent, as always, behind the leering half-skull of his helm. Sitting opposite is Corpus-Commander Bartimeus of the Angelica Mortis, as gruff and blunt as his immaterial voidmanship. Beyond the bridge officer sit the Fifth Company’s remaining squad whips: Ishmael, Joachim and the chief whip, Uriah Skase. Skase is a veteran – as the torn and mangled flesh of his face testifies. It sits on his face like an ugly, snarling mask, seemingly only held together by the staples, stitches and decorative rings that run across it. I have no reason to believe that the rest of his body isn’t scarred in the same way, like some hideous resurrection experiment.
Ezrachi has already told me that Skase is going to be a problem. More so even than Chaplain Shadrath. He is a legend within the company. An assault squad whip, he has more combat experience than the rest of his squad added together. He has walked away from the most grievous injuries and heaviest fighting of the Fifth Company’s many victories and has been at the forefront of the Excoriators’ efforts to reclaim the Stigmartyr from the filth Alpha Legion at V
eiglehaven. He is loved by his men, who view him as an indestructible force. Ezrachi heard that he was so unrelenting on the battlefield that on the midnight plains of Menga-Dardra, a Black Legion Land Raider slammed into him with its dozer blade, ran him down and crushed him beneath its tracks, only for the mauled and buckled Skase to get back to his feet and rush back into the heart of the fighting. Worse, he had been Corpus-Captain Thaddeus’s right hand and, with Shadrath, had held the company together in the wake of the atrocities at Vieglehaven. Every Excoriator in the Fifth had fully expected Uriah Skase’s promotion to corpus-captain as a given. That was until Chapter Master Ichabod’s intervention and my unwelcome arrival aboard the Angelica Mortis.
The surviving battle-brothers of the Fifth have been reorganised by Skase into three full squads. He has taken the first, Squad Cicatrix. The second, Squad Castigir, is led by Skase’s own right hand, Squad Whip Ishmael, an Excoriator crafted of much the same unforgiving brutality as the chief whip. Brother Joachim has been recently promoted to whip of Squad Censura. Joachim is younger and fresher of face, but his devotion to Skase and his ideals is clear, assuming the form of a kind of hero worship. Together, the three whips have the allegiance of the company’s fighting brotherhood locked up and the Fifth Company’s detestation of my existence is universal.
The only battle-brothers not under Skase’s influence are the Tenth Company Scouts under Veteran Squad Whip Keturah. Fortunately, Silas Keturah allows for no other influence upon his neophytes but his own. I have felt little warmth for my own authority from the silver-haired veteran, who has clearly not relished using his young charges to bolster the depleted numbers under my command. Whenever we speak, I feel his critical scrutiny through the visor interface built into his brow and the cyclopean burn of the sniper’s single bionic lens, whirring softly to magnification.
By the time I finally speak, I have been sat there for some time – lost in my thoughts. No doubt my brothers will think this some proud indulgence and abhor me all the more.
‘Corpus-commander Bartimeus, when do you expect us to make St Ethalberg?’ Kersh asked across the cool stone of the table. When Bartimeus didn’t immediately reply, Kersh pressed. ‘Learned brother?’
The Scourge immediately regretted the derisive comment. Sarcasm was an indulgence and one not befitting the Emperor’s Angels, let alone a corpus-captain. Ezrachi had warned him that it would be unwise to meet the discontent in the company head on. He advised the Scourge to think like an officer and handle his men as such. Kersh’s belligerence was not so easily tamed, however, and his warrior’s pride was constantly fed by the sting of the company’s own mordant provocation. As Ezrachi had observed, it was fuel for the mutinous cancer already eating away at the Fifth Company’s collective soul. Initially, the Space Marines – already unhappy with the choice of their new corpus-captain – had been taken aback by the Scourge’s manner, but this soon settled into a morose sourness that became the hallmark of their disappointment and acceptance.
‘Warp translation was successful,’ the Excoriators commander mumbled with ill-disguised truculence.
‘Speak up, sir!’ Kersh barked. ‘This is the tactical-oratorium. You’re not talking to one of your bridge drones now, corpus-commander.’
Bartimeus glared at the Scourge. Raising his voice a little, he reported, ‘We are approaching from the edge of the system at quarter sub-light speed.’
‘Why the hesitant approach? Were not my orders to reach the cardinal world at best possible speed?’
‘That is the best possible speed,’ Bartimeus snapped back. ‘The system is crowded with Adeptus Ministorum craft and the like on similar approaches.’
‘Understood,’ Kersh acknowledged. ‘And what of our turbulent passage?’
‘Sir?’
‘I felt every bump and roll in the pit of my stomach. Did we encounter difficulties during the jump?’
‘The Angelica Mortis is a thoroughbred cruiser, a veteran of her class…’ Bartimeus began defensively.
‘I don’t doubt it, corpus-commander,’ the Scourge replied. ‘No censure was intended. I was making reference to the journey, not the vessel.’
Bartimeus’s broad features dropped a little. ‘Immaterial squalls and storms are common this close to the Eye. It is possible that we crossed the wake of a convoy or flotilla, just clear of their entry point.’
‘Possible, corpus-commander?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it possible that it was a fleet or an armada, rather than a convoy?’
‘I’m sure I could not say…’
‘Well let’s try to be sure, shall we? Work with the Epistolary here to have your observations communicated to Cadia and Cypra Mundi. They may contribute to other intelligence. There could be a Black Crusade, for all we know, blasting its way out of the Eye of Terror.’
‘I think that unlikely…’ Bartimeus bit back.
‘And I think we should not profess to know the polluted contents of the Despoiler’s mind.’
‘It’s not the Despoiler,’ Chaplain Shadrath announced.
‘A spiritual perspective, Chaplain?’ Kersh turned on him. ‘I dare say the victims of previous crusades might have thought the same before their untimely deaths.’
‘It is the Keeler Comet,’ Shadrath hissed through his half-grille.
‘Stargazer too, Chaplain?’ Kersh said. ‘Are there no end to your talents? Pray, tell us how this astral body might provide an impediment in the warp?’
‘It’s an unnatural body, my lord,’ Melmoch interjected. The Librarian looked from Kersh to the Chaplain and then back to Kersh. ‘Records show that it was a long-period returning body that last visited the segmentum over ten thousand years ago.’
‘Was?’
‘Upon its return it found the Eye of Terror in its path. Witnessing vessels claim that it has emerged… changed. A blood-red comet, with a trailing ethereal tail and an erratic and unpredictable course.’
‘How can a comet have an unpredictable course?’ Kersh marvelled. ‘It has an orbit, it obeys the laws of gravity.’
‘Not the Keeler, sir,’ the Epistolary insisted. ‘It seems to have a mind of its own.’
‘How do you know of this?’
Melmoch told him. ‘The Ancient Traveller, sir. A pict of the original body, from antiquity, by the remembrancer Euphrati Keeler.’
‘Euphrati Keeler?’
‘Yes, corpus-captain. Saint Euphrati – prophet of the God-Emperor.’
‘The God-Emperor?’ Kersh questioned. ‘You think there not enough traits to set you apart from common Adeptus Astartes, Epistolary Melmoch, that you must indulge a belief that those more than mortal find offensive?’
‘I meant no offence, sir,’ Melmoch stated. ‘Only that the gift to which you allude is believed by some of my kind to be an expression of His divinity.’
‘And by some of mine to be an aberration, good Librarian, but there we have it.’
‘I am not the first Adeptus Astartes to hold such beliefs,’ Melmoch said, his smile still fixed to his face.
‘Well,’ Kersh said, leaning his head against the palm of his gauntlet. ‘We are all learning something today. To think that I was spending my time in the practise cages when I should have been in the Librarium.’
‘Your travels have taken you out of the segmentum, my lord. The comet’s reappearance is a relatively recent occurrence.’
The corpus-captain nodded slow thanks to the Epistolary. The Librarian would have made an able diplomat. Kersh had indeed been out of circulation for some time, but the psyker had only mentioned his duties at the far-flung Feast of Blades – and for this Kersh was grateful. He had not mentioned the time the Scourge had spent in the Darkness. Kersh allowed the index digit of his gauntlet to rest in the raw cavity in the side of his face. It had become a habit during moments of thoughtful reflection. Since losing his eye in the Feast, he had also taken to tapping the metal ball-bearing in the socket of his eye with the ceramite tip of his finger.
‘And what of these visionary distractions the company has been experiencing, Chaplain Shadrath?’ Kersh continued. ‘The Apothecary informs me that he has checked our water, provisions and life support systems for any evidence of tampering or neglect and has found none. I put it to you that there is some other explanation, perhaps the effects of this strange comet Melmoch speaks of.’
‘I believe the malign influence of the comet could be responsible,’ the Chaplain told Kersh evenly, ‘but I detect no signs of outward corruption or spiritual licentiousness. At present I have too little to go on to make an informed judgement.’
‘I am beginning to understand how you feel, Chaplain,’ Kersh retorted. ‘Well, while you reach a conclusion the rest of us will go on fearing for our eternal souls.’ Before Shadrath could reply the Scourge moved furiously on. ‘Brother Dancred, what is the status of the company’s Thunderhawks?’
The two power-towers reaching out of the back of the Techmarine’s adapted armour crackled and arced with energy. Dancred’s clockwork face whirred to life, the nest of Omnissiah-honouring cogs and pinions working in unison like a mask of gears.
‘Two of the company’s Thunderhawks are lost to us, corpus-captain,’ Dancred told him. ‘During the attack on Ignis Prime, the Inwitian was destroyed on the Chapter house landing pad. The Flagellant returned but has sustained too much damage to be saved. I have conducted the appropriate rites and appeased the fading spirit of the fallen machine. It will live on through the invaluable parts it will provide for ongoing repairs to the Demetrius Katafalque III and the venerable Gauntlet. The Impunitas did not partake in the original operation or the rescue on Ignis Prime.’
‘The Impunitas is our only functioning gunship?’