Koris was the ranking officer now, and the craggy old warhound seemed determined to cut a blood cost for the captain’s death from each and every Word Bearer. But Rafen knew the veteran better than most of the Marines there, and he saw the signs of distress on his former teacher that others did not.
For all of Koris’ encouragement and rousing, Simeon’s sudden killing had dealt their morale a fatal blow, and the will of the remaining men lay wounded, bleeding out into the grass.
Rafen saw the surge in the enemy line as the rest of the Word Bearers’ force joined the fight, and in that moment, he was certain they would die here. Unhallowed lighting flashed in the distance from a blazing force weapon, and the Traitors roared with approval. They drew back, a ruby tide retreating from the land’s edge before returning as a flood. And then on they came, killing and ripping Rafen’s comrades into fleshy shreds. His gun clattered, the barrel spitting hot as rounds big as fists tore into the foe – but then a sound, a heart-stopping shriek of sundered air, fell across the battlefield.
Rafen instinctively looked up, and felt ice in the pit of his stomachs. Swooping in through the low cloud by the dozen were bright red Thunderhawk drop-ships, each one bristling with missile and cannon, each one heavy with more Marines to feed the fray. Half-glimpsed in the contrails and gunsmoke, the flyers looped over the enemy and turned.
“We are lost,” said Turcio, as if the words were his dying breath. “With such reinforcements, we will be drowned in a sea of corrupted ones.”
“Then we’ll litter this place with their dead before we do…” Rafen’s voice tailed off as the Thunderhawks opened fire as one, and bright spears of light lanced from their las-cannon. But the shots never reached them. The beams fell short of the Marines and struck the middle of the Word Bearers’ force with devastating effect, killing a unit of Chaos Terminators in one blaze of fire. Now the other flyers released packs of hellstreak warheads, which tore into the Traitors with furious abandon.
Rafen’s eyes widened as the leading drop-ship cut the sky above him, and in a blink of crimson he saw the sigils painted on the aircraft: a pair of silver angel’s wings, adorned with a shimmering teardrop of blood. As the Emperor willed it, so the Blood Angels had been delivered from the jaws of oblivion by their battle-brothers.
CHAPTER TWO
In their unfettered arrogance, Iskavan’s Word Bearers had expected only token resistance at the Necropolita. With the unerring accuracy of their artillery strikes from the Murder-class cruiser Dirge Eterna in low orbit and the lightning speed of their ground assault, not one of the Traitor Marines had doubted that the day would be theirs. The deconsecration of Cybele in the name of Chaos undivided would come to pass, or so they had believed. Those certainties were now ashes in the mouth of Tancred, who watched as his soldiers became screaming torches of flame under the punishing beam salvoes from the Blood Angel’s Thunderhawks.
The torturer had paused as the entire forward phalanx of his most celebrated warriors vanished in a plume of blazing hellgun fire. The Space Marines on the ground, the tiny band of men who just seconds before had counted their lives on the ticks of a failing clock, surged forward with renewed vigour and scrambled over the dead Word Bearers to break the Chaos line. And with his enemy dropping from the grey sky on wings of fire and his soldiers falling about him, Iskavan turned a stony countenance on Tancred. Then he gave the order that disgusted the torturer to his very core. The Dark Apostle told his troops to fall back, and, cursing the corpse god of men with every step they took, the Word Bearers broke apart and drew away, fading into the endless graveyards.
Tancred studied the face of his commander and he saw the anger of his men reflected there; and yet still he had given the demand. It was almost as if—dare he even think such a thing?— Iskavan had been given orders to let the Blood Angels live. It was the sacred war doctrine of the Word Bearers to advance, advance and never give quarter, yet Iskavan called out for them to retreat and led them into the shadows without comment or explanation. Tancred considered this as they broke away by ranks, firing as they went. There would have to be some plan that his master had concealed from him, some greater scheme at work that would later redeem this indignity. The torturer prayed that this was the reason. The only other alternative was that Iskavan had realised that Tancred’s prognostication had been false. If that were true, Tancred would never see his death coming.
Rafen stayed close to Koris as they tore chunks out of the Word Bearers’ division. Eventually it fragmented, until at last there was no enemy to follow. The brother-sergeant halted his men at the ridge where Rafen had hidden in the shade of the angel statue. The young Blood Angel glanced up to see the graceful stone figure still there, untouched by the passing of the archenemy.
Koris approached him, the old warrior’s bearded face grim. “They’ve gone to ground. Without a force big enough to seek them out, we’ll not be able to destroy them all.”
“We live still,” said Rafen, hardly believing the turn of events himself.
Koris gave him a brusque nod. “Aye, but this matter is not concluded, lad. Not by a long way.” A drop-ship turned overhead, the roar of its engines halting the conversation until it passed downwind. “Those horned bastards never break unless they have to. I’ll warrant they’ll be digging in to make ready for a counter-strike before sunset.”
Rafen watched the Thunderhawk drop into a hover to let a couple of men descend to the ground. “But with reinforcements, they’ll be no match for us.”
“Do not be so sure.” Koris spat. “They caught us unawares once, Rafen. By the Throne, they’ll have more surprises in store.” He made a cutting gesture with the blade of his hand. “The Word Bearers are tenacious.”
One of the Blood Angels from the drop-ship approached at a run. “Hail!” he called. “I am Corvus. Who commands here?”
“Brother-Sergeant Koris of the Fifth Company,” the veteran Marine replied, tapping his heart and his head in a gesture of gratitude. “You have our thanks.”
The warrior threw a glance over his shoulder, in the direction of the ruined Necropolita. “The governor is dead, then?”
Koris nodded. “Along with every member of his retinue, and our captain. I am what passes for authority on this planet now.”
“No longer. You will find that burden has been lifted from you, brother-sergeant,” the Blood Angel said smoothly. “By his decree, the Inquisitor Ramius Stele has declared the planet Cybele under his stewardship from this moment onward. He expects you at the star port immediately.”
“Stele?” Rafen repeated. “The leader of the Bellus Expedition?”
“The very same. The ship stands at high anchor above as we speak,” said Corvus, then added, “The inquisitor is not known for his patience, brother-sergeant.”
Koris made a sour face and headed for the Thunderhawk, the rest of the squad filing into the ship alongside him. “Rafen, you’ll accompany me.”
He nodded. “I confess I am curious to see the faces of our saviours.”
Koris said nothing as they scrambled after Corvus into the drop-ship’s cramped interior.
From the air, the true scale of the Word Bearers’ attack was made manifest. The Thunderhawk’s pilot kept the aircraft just below the lower edge of the cloud deck, rumbling over the thermals that coiled up from smoking bomb craters bored into the blue-green turf. Endless rows of identical grave markers stretched to the horizon from every direction. Blackened darts of poison were strewn where the warheads had fallen, and the toxins and manufactured taints had been worked into the metal of the shells so that they spread corruption on everything they touched. The landmarks of giant crypts dotted the landscape like bunkers in a war zone.
“What is that?” Turcio asked, pointing at a livid purple stain around the base of a memorial ziggurat.
“Binder fungus,” said one of the other Marines, without looking. “The enemy lace their engine fuel with it, so it is cast adrift in the air from
their exhaust fumes.”
“What does it do?”
“Whatever they want it to,” snapped Koris. “The Chaos biologians impose patterns on the spores with their rituals. When the fungus takes root and grows, it forms the shapes of their vile symbols.”
Turcio’s nose wrinkled, as if he smelled something foul. He could see where the mould was already taking on the shape of an eight-armed star.
The myriad rings of weapon strike points drew overlapping ovals around the landscape, many of which were centred on the site of the Necropolita. Rafen’s only memory of the ornate marble keep was when they had first approached it, as they drove in from the east on the Great Penitent Bridge that spanned the Ghona Canyon. The Blood Angel had chanced to look through the firing slot of his Rhino’s door and saw the magnificent white shape thrusting into the air, circled by thin towers in organ-pipe clusters. Gone now, all rubble and shattered ivory splinters. The flyer banked as they passed the ruins; the direct hit that had killed the priest-governor had blown the building down like a house of tarot cards. Rafen noticed a pair of grounded drop-ships nearby, survivors loading themselves aboard in skirmish lines. His augmented vision counted few men on the ground, however; it seemed that a retreat was in progress, not a reinforcement.
“We have been ordered to draw all forces back to the star port.” Corvus spoke, as if he saw the question forming in Rafen’s mind. “We noted from orbit that the Necropolita was lost. The port makes a better location for a strong-point.”
Rafen agreed; it was a tactically sound choice. After the Word Bearers’ bombardment, Captain Simeon had said the very same thing, but the enemy strikes had been carefully targeted to down the bridge behind the keep, and with only one or two remaining ground vehicles in their possession there had been no way for Rafen’s detachment to cross back over. The handful of Chapter serfs and men they had left behind at the port had no doubt been killed in the same shell deluge that struck the outpost.
The canyon flashed past beneath them, the torn edges of the suspension bridge blunted and bent. The great statues of Cybele’s first pilgrims that held up the trestles were gone, dashed to pieces on the ravine’s floor kilometres below.
Rafen glanced at his battle-brother. “There was a naval warship that brought us here, the Celaeno. What was its fate?”
Corvus shook his head. “I do not know the specifics, but it is my understanding that the frigate’s remains were detected when we emerged from the warp. The Word Bearers’ vessel we engaged in orbit must have caught them unawares.”
“Unfortunate.” Rafen said. Koris stood nearby, silent, his face steady and unreadable. The younger Blood Angel considered the men aboard the Celaeno, imagining them unprepared and alone before the ferocity of a Chaos strike vessel more than twice their tonnage. He hoped for their sake that the Emperor had taken their souls quickly.
The flat ferrocrete expanse of the star port appeared beyond a strip of woodland, clusters of hangars and fuel tanks visible in the distance. The landing field was practically unmarked by enemy fire, which instantly made the plans of the Word Bearers clear: they intended to keep the port intact so that they might use it themselves. Without ceremony the Thunderhawk’s nose dipped sharply into a landing pattern.
The battalion laid out at the port seemed a world away from the tattered remains of the late Captain Simeon’s company, who trickled out from the returning drop-ships with their armour scorched and pitted by near-misses and shrapnel. The wounded Space Marines were guided by Apothecaries to a makeshift staging area, while the others stood warily in a loose group as the Blood Angels from the Bellus ranged around them, their battle gear parade-ground pristine and untouched.
The survivors of the Word Bearers’ attack were stern-faced and muted; each of them had been convinced, as Rafen was, that they were due to meet their end this day. Simeon’s death and the sudden reversal of their fortunes had left them in sombre mood. Brother Alactus was leading them in a prayer of thanks to Terra, but none of them could shake the pervasive sense of doom they felt in the endless field of tombstones. Nearby, servitors were assembling the remains of the Guardsmen that had been garrisoned at the port’s orbital defence guns; each of the men had died in horrific pain from the nerve toxins dropped by the Word Bearers. Their bodies were twisted and gnarled by the muscle spasms that killed them. The faint bouquet of the poison, far too weak to give a Space Marine anything more than a mild headache, still lingered in the air.
Koris and Rafen left Turcio to assemble the troops into some semblance of order and moved deeper into the port, past pairs of Baal-pattern Predator tanks and land speeders. Some of the vehicles showed battle honours on their sponsons that Rafen did not recognise.
“You have seen many engagements, Brother Corvus?” he asked the Marine who walked with them.
“The greenskins may be dull-witted beasts, but they fight hard,” he replied. “You know the mission of the Bellus?”
“Who could not?” Koris was blunt and clipped. “A most sacred endeavour indeed.”
Rafen answered with a nod. To great fanfare and good omens among the Chapter faithful, the battle barge Bellus had been sent on its way a decade earlier by Commander Dante himself, high lord of the Blood Angels. Crewed with a hand-picked force of men on an assignment to trace an artefact that dated back to the Horus Heresy, the Bellus’s quest was to recover the archeotech device known as the Spear of Telesto, an object thought lost in the confusion of those dark times. It was only the chance discovery of a storehouse of documents on Evangelion that had led to the founding of the ship’s mission, and under the command of Ramius Stele—an inquisitor of most rigid nature trusted by both the Chapter and the highest levels of the ecclesiarchy—Dante had sent the Bellus to the ork-held worlds on the borders of the Segmentum Obscurus. Word of the expedition’s imminent return had been spoken of among the Blood Angels for many months now.
Corvus was speaking. “It has been a challenging campaign, but we were blessed. Sanguinius was watching over us.”
“And the spear?”
Pride swelled the Marine’s words. “Secure in the deep holds aboard Bellus.” He glanced at Rafen. “Truly, brother, it is a sight to behold.”
“You laid eyes upon it?” said Koris, in a low voice.
“We all did,” Corvus noted. “Stele himself brought it out of the ork warren on the morning we killed the last of them. He held it up for every man to see.” His eyes glazed over for a brief instant, as the moment replayed in his mind. “I felt the radiance of the Lord Primogenitor upon my face that day.”
“Hard to imagine a servant of the Ordo Hereticus would be allowed to place his hands on something so sacred.” Koris said, his voice carefully colourless. “Some Blood Angels would decry such a thing.”
Corvus gave the veteran a hard glance. “Only those who do not know Stele would say the like. He is a true comrade to our Chapter.”
“Of course,” Koris allowed. “I do not mean to infer otherwise. The honour debt between the Blood Angels and Inquisitor Stele is well documented.”
Rafen watched the interplay between the two men and said nothing. Throughout all his years of service, Koris had never been one to take anything at face value, and he would often probe and press at the thoughts of the men he served with. Sometimes he challenged them to the point of near-heresy. It was, he had often said, the only way to see the truth behind the prayers and catechism that formed so much of their daily lives. To believe, one must first be the greatest sceptic.
Rafen had seen the tapestries of Riga that hung in the silent cloister of the fortress-monastery on Baal, they depicted the ancient depictions of Sanguinius and the Spear of Telesto in action against the Slaughter-Lord Morroga. The great battle was rendered in threads dyed a million shades of red, every strand coloured in the blood of a fallen brother. And across the vast, heavy landscapes of dull ruby, the golden archangel who was their Chapter’s founder was shown—his beautiful face in its most terri
ble aspect, driving back the tide of Chaos. In every panel, the holy spear blazed like a shard of the sun, and Rafen found himself wondering what it would be like to hold the haft of a weapon that once belonged to his eternal liege.
The trio came to a halt outside an ornate pavilion of dark material that sported arcane wards and had silvery threads that chased through it. Dangling across the threshold was a pair of braziers forged from steel-plated skulls. Each grinning visage was crested with a stylised letter “I”—the unmistakable mark of the Inquisition. The tent was protected by a pair of Blood Angels honour guards, their golden helmets glinting in the watery sunlight.
“Brother-Sergeant Koris, if you will attend? Lord Stele awaits your report.” Corvus gestured for the veteran to follow him inside.
Rafen made to accompany them, but the closest honour guard came off his mark and blocked his path. “Just Brother Koris,” said Corvus.
Koris threw Rafen a look. “Stand to, lad. I’ll not be long.”
Reluctantly, Rafen did as he was ordered. The Inquisition’s penchant for secrecy and obfuscation grated on the Blood Angel, as it did on most members of the Adeptus Astartes. Space Marines believed in the strength of direct action, of decisive deeds set forth without the petty minutiae of politics and endless discussion. Although he would never give it voice, Rafen disliked the fact that someone like Stele could sit here in the midst of a Chapter encampment as if he were the Chapter’s master in all things. Rafen turned away, dismissing the thought—and found himself staring at a familiar face.
White flashes from the winged crests on the armour of a tall Blood Angel drew his gaze. The figure strode purposefully across the star port runway from the mouth of a freshly landed Thunderhawk, with a pair of tactical Marines trailing at his flanks as a personal guard.
Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow Page 3